


How the Dead Live

by vanitashaze



Series: Alabanza [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Aromantic Relationship, BDSM, Better Living and Psychological Healing Through Kinky Polyamory, Bisexual Character, Canon Disabled Character, Dom/sub, F/M, Future Fic, Goats, Good BDSM Etiquette, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Non-Equilateral Triangle, Politics, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romantic Relationship, Service Submission, Subdrop, Subspace, Threesome - F/M/M, sub sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-12 15:12:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 45,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitashaze/pseuds/vanitashaze
Summary: “So, what’re doing all the way out here?” Matt asks. “I’m flattered, but I’m not exactly a rebel asset anymore. Pidge has known where I am for a while and this is the first time you’ve visited; you haven’t been jumping at the chance to see me. Why now?”“No, I haven’t,” Shiro admits. “I thought the past should stay in the past.”“Wow, wouldn’t that be great,” Matt says. “The past in the past. Just imagine.”“I’m here for a reason,” Shiro says.Matt snorts. “Ah. So not just to see me again.”“No,” Shiro says. “I’m here for a favor. A really big one.”After a close call with Lotor’s forces, Shiro and Allura reach out to Matt for help. This might get more complicated than they expected.[This work is part of the Alabanza 'verse but may be read as a standalone.]





	1. First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for content warnings. This work is part of the Alabanza 'verse (occurring during the events of If I Had a Hammer), but can also be read as a standalone.

 

 

 

_Time, on its own, heals nothing._

— Mary Rakow, The Memory Room

 

 

 ****The moon that Matt lives on now isn’t on any map that Shiro can find outside of its own system. It takes him a while to figure out how to get there, awkwardly jumping from coordinate to coordinate based on directions he gets from people in the ports he stops over in and the passing ships he hails, directions that he’s pretty sure have turned him around more than once. Space may be full of wonders and nightmares both, but out in these poorer systems, far away from any important planets or trade routes, it’s not much different from driving in rural Arizona when finding a moon that’s located on the galactic equivalent of a dirt road.

 

It’s not that Matt’s moon is some secret rebel sanctum, like the Blade of Marmora base. It’s just tiny and boring. As far as Shiro can tell, its main exports are tubers and some kind of six-legged goat, and venturing off-planet long enough to export either one of those only happens if someone is feeling really adventurous. Nobody he asks has bad things to say about the inhabitants — they’re apparently good, hard-working people — but nobody has anything to say beyond that, either.

 

It’s not what he would have expected for Matt, given what Shiro remembered of him and what Pidge has told him — but none of them are living how Shiro would have expected to, so many years ago, and he hasn’t seen Matt in more than a decade.

 

Shiro lands his cruiser in the middle of what turns out to be a goat field, since this moon doesn’t have any ports that he can tell. Then the owner of said field pushes her way through the clump of her unimpressed goats and he’s politely but firmly redirected to set his cruiser down in the field behind Matt’s cottage — also a goat field, apparently, but one that has lain unused ever since Matt took up residence there, because “the goats would be too much for him to keep up with, what with his legs”, which Shiro doesn’t understand until Matt comes out of his cottage to wave hello and watch Shiro pick his way up the hill to him and Shiro sees the metal legs, gleaming dully in the hazy grey sunlight.

 

Matt also doesn’t appear to be armed, until Matt shifts and Shiro sees the shoulder holster under his jacket, which makes Shiro feel better.

 

“How was the trip?” Matt asks in greeting when Shiro finally finishes scaling the shale-strewn hill.

 

“Long and confusing,” Shiro says. “I got wrong directions a few different times, kept having to double back. You have a hell of a front path. Do you have to climb up and down that every time you need something from the village?”

 

Matt grins, pure Holt mischievousness; maybe he hasn’t changed that much from the boy that Shiro remembers. “There’s a much shorter way up if you go a ways around the hill. But you looked so fit, and it’s a long way to shout.”

 

“You look —” Shiro starts, and then realizes he has no idea how to finish that sentence.

 

“Older?” Matt suggests. “Shorter? More bionic? More pastoral?”

 

“All of those?” Shiro tries, and Matt laughs a little, gestures him towards his front door.

 

“Come on inside,” he says, “we’ll have tea, catch up.”

 

Calling Matt’s home a cottage is a bit like calling a one-room apartment “a charming loft space” — it’s barely one step up from a shack, certainly not a house, because houses have more than one room and what Shiro hopes is a bathroom and not a door to the path to an outhouse. Small as it is, though, it’s warm, no wind whistling in through the daubed stone walls, and Shiro sheds his heavy coat gratefully.

 

Matt notices and points to the floor. “In-floor hydronic heating system,” he explains. “First thing I did when I moved in. This moon’s seasons are basically fall, winter, and worse winter, and I don’t mind being cold, but not literally all the time.”

 

“Did you have anyone to help?” Shiro asks, trying to subtly check the room for signs of another inhabitant.

 

“Do you mean, ‘Do I have someone’?” Matt asks. “No, I’m alone here. It’s okay. It’s peaceful. I’ve spent too much time living in camps and barracks, anyway. It’s a change of pace.”

 

“Did you buy this place?” Shiro asks.

 

“With what money?” Matt asks. “I had to work my whole passage just to get to this moon. No, it was empty when I got here. Total mess — holes in the roof, busted pipes, no heating, all the furniture was rotten or broken. But they needed someone who knew machines, so they said that if I could fix it up, I could stay, and I traded labor for parts.”

 

“You’ve put a lot of work into it,” Shiro observes. “It looks good. Cozy.”

 

“I had to,” Matt says. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

 

“You could have lived on the Castle with us,” Shiro says. “Pidge would have loved that.”

 

“I was done with the war,” Matt says. “I didn’t want to live on a warship.”

 

He crosses to what looks like a workbench, piled high with tools and parts and bits of things that just look like junk to Shiro, old and rusting, a scavenged hodgepodge of a thousand different planets’ technologies. Every surface in Matt’s cottage is like this, but the floor is completely clear. Shiro wonders why, until he sees how carefully Matt picks his way around the furniture, the faint grinding and groans from Matt’s prosthetics that’s nothing like the silken silence of Shiro’s own arm. Matt really wasn’t kidding when he said that he was shorter — he’s a good seven, ten centimeters shorter than when Shiro last saw him. Lower center of gravity, Shiro thinks. Easier to balance. No gleaming prosthetics for Matt, not like Haggar’s Champion, augmented with the best that the Galra Empire had to offer. Matt’s legs look like everything else here, cobbled-together and far too old.

 

“Do you want tea?” Matt offers, flicking on what Shiro recognizes as a battered electric kettle on the bench and rummaging around in a cupboard. “This galaxy doesn’t do coffee, shame, but the local stuff here is… well, you get used to it, but it’s that or filtered river water.”

 

“Tea sounds good,” Shiro says cautiously. Matt emerges from the cupboard clutching two chipped, mismatched teacups, glasses slightly askew.

 

“Good, because you really don’t want to drink the water here,” he says. “It won’t make you sick or anything, it just tastes like shit.”

 

He nods towards a second chair, shoved in the corner, and Shiro drags it back to the bench, where Matt is perched on his work stool, carefully measuring out tiny spoonfuls of something that… well, Shiro hopes it tastes better than it smells.

 

“Oh look, I get to be tall again,” Matt jokes as Shiro awkwardly perches on the edge of the second chair, a good two feet shorter than Matt’s stool, and then nearly topples over when he accidentally rocks back on the uneven chair legs.

 

“You know, I’ll just stand for a while,” Shiro says, and waves Matt away when he tries to stand up and offer Shiro the stool. “That whole cruiser ride was a lot of sitting anyways.”

 

“Suit yourself,” Matt says, but he flinches when Shiro suddenly reaches for the teacup on the bench next to him, his metal arm flashing in the greasy grey sun streaming through the window.

 

“Sorry,” Shiro says. “Sorry.”

 

“It’s been such a long time, you’d think I’d be over it by now,” Matt says, a touch of bitterness on his tongue, although his face is hard to read behind those glasses. “But it’s the metal. My brain keeps thinking it’s a weapon.”

 

“I can… take it off?” Shiro offers hesitantly, even though he really, really doesn’t want to; just the thought of being that vulnerable sends a little whisper of fear through his mind.

 

Matt shakes his head. “I’ll deal,” he says. “Mine are just a way to get around, I don’t care if they’re on or off, but you seem to be attached.”

 

“That’s a terrible pun,” Shiro says after a moment, and Matt grins, saluting him with the teacup.

 

“Amputee humor,” he says. “There’s only so many people I can share it with. Seriously, though, it’s okay. I’m not going to make you get rid of your arm just because I’m uncomfortable.”

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever taken it off,” Shiro says. “I don’t need to. They built it to be durable, and the neural connection —”

 

Matt laughs. “Yeah, you’ve got some pretty sweet Galra tech there. I built mine. Not the prettiest things ever, but they do what I need them to. Mostly.”

 

“We could help,” Shiro blurts out. “If you’re having problems. I’m not an engineer, but there’s so much tech on the Castle, I’m sure we can find something to help with — whatever problem you’re having.”

 

Matt looks down, fiddles with his teacup. “Thanks. But I, uh — I don’t really do space travel anymore. And the locals here would prefer that you didn’t bring the Castle here. They’re already twitchy enough with the Black Paladin visiting.”

 

“Really?” Shiro asks. “The one I met seemed friendly.”

 

“They do,” Matt says. “But trust me, they’re freaking out. They’ve managed to stay free of the Galra by being too small and boring to conquer, and they’re not looking to change that up. I don’t blame them.”

 

“I didn’t realize I was that obvious,” Shiro says. “I was wearing a jacket, and my cruiser isn’t marked. It’s not like I came in piloting Black.”

 

Matt shrugs. “The people you met on your way here, they probably didn’t know, but the inhabitants here know enough about me to put things together. And the scar and the hair are distinctive. Did you dye it?”

 

“No, it just grows that way now. Are you going to be in trouble because I’m here?” Shiro asks. Damn it, he should have thought — he should have considered it, not just what they were asking of Matt, but what they might be doing to him just by coming here —

 

“I think I’ll be okay,” Matt says. “I don’t know if they like me, really, but I don’t give them trouble, and they’re a lot more mechanized now that I’m here. Who’ll fix their central heating if they throw me off a cliff?”

 

“Is that something they do?” Shiro asks, alarmed.

 

“Not that I know of,” Matt says. “But you know how far people will go if they’re pushed.”

 

“That’s a terrible pun,” Shiro says.

 

“It’s true, though,” Matt says.

 

Shiro tries a sip of his tea so he doesn’t have to respond to that. It doesn’t taste any better than it smelled.

 

“So, what’re doing all the way out here?” Matt asks. “I’m flattered, but I’m not exactly a rebel asset anymore. Pidge has known where I am for a while and this is the first time you’ve visited; you haven’t been jumping at the chance to see me. Why now?”

 

“No, I haven’t,” Shiro admits; uncomfortable around this sharper, harder man, who seems to see through Shiro with the same cutting edge as his sibling. “I thought the past should stay in the past.”

 

“Wow, wouldn’t that be great,” Matt says. “The past in the past. Just imagine.”

 

“I’m here for a reason,” Shiro says.

 

Matt snorts. “Ah. So not just to see me again.”

 

“No,” Shiro says. “I’m here for a favor. A really big one.”

 

“I’m not fighting again, Shiro,” Matt warns him. “Maybe you and Pidge can keep doing that, but I’m done. I did my part.”

 

“Not that,” Shiro says hurriedly. “No, it’s… I have a son now.”

 

Matt blinks at him owlishly. “Mazel tov.”

 

“His name’s Alric,” Shiro says. “He just turned one.”

 

“Who’s his mom?” Matt asks. “Are you still with her? Or did she —”

 

“Princess Allura of Altea,” Shiro says, which still sounds a little silly to say out loud in any relation to himself — a princess and… Shiro.

 

“Wow,” Matt says. “Princess Allura. Aim high. Congratulations, on the baby and your… wife? Girlfriend?”

 

“Partner,” Shiro says. “Technically I’m her consort, but — partner. Didn’t Pidge tell you?”

 

“We were focused on other things,” Matt says quietly, and that’s when Shiro remembers that Pidge’s last trip here had been to sit shiva with Matt for their father, who’d been missing ever since Kerberos, after the remaining Holts had decided that it was too painful to keep waiting for the man to appear alive when in all likelihood he’s been rotting in a mass grave in some labor camp for the last decade.

 

“I’m sorry about Dr. Holt,” Shiro says. “I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like a good man. A good father.”

 

“What’s your favor, Shiro?” Matt asks. “What do you want?”

 

“Did Pidge tell you about the other kids on the Castle?” Shiro asks.

 

“They mentioned something, I think, but I don’t really remember,” Matt says.

 

“There’s Alric and two others, a thirteen-year-old and a ten-year-old,” Shiro says. “Xiomara and Meyzak. Xio and Maze. Keith and Lance’s kids — the Red and Blue Paladins,” he clarifies.

 

“I know who the Red and Blue Paladins are, Shiro,” Matt says. “Especially the famous Galra Red Paladin, everyone knows him. And I remember Keith and Lance from the Garrison, sort of, although Keith wasn’t Galra when I knew him. Was he?”

 

“It’s complicated,” Shiro offers.

 

“It usually is out here,” Matt says. “There were a lot of wild rumors at one point about the Blue Paladin getting knocked up, too, although they died down after a while.”

 

“The rumors were true. That’s Xio,” Shiro says. “Maze is adopted. She’s Galra — not mixed, like Xio and Keith, but full Galra, but a runty one, so — Well, you know what they do to those. Xio’s got some behavioral issues, Maze has a lot of chronic health problems, but they’re both good kids.”

 

“…Okay,” Matt says.

 

“I don’t know how much you hear out here, but — the war hasn’t been going well for us lately, and the Castle has already been in a few big battles. Allura and I, we’ve been trying to make plans for Alric and the other kids in case something goes wrong, but after what happened on Mnenmus, even our closest allies’ planets aren’t looking very safe,” Shiro tries to explain.

 

“What’s your favor, Shiro?” Matt asks again, sounding tired.

 

“If we could find a way to get them here safely, without exposing you — if something happens to us, would you take them?” Shiro asks. “Take care of them?”

 

Matt stares at him. “You want me to take your kids.”

 

“This was the best idea we could think of,” Shiro says. “All of our other allies are well known, or rebel groups that couldn’t take an infant anyway, but you — Nobody knows you, and nobody knows where you live, except the people here, and it sounds like they won’t be talking. And we trust you.”

 

“I’m surprised it wasn’t the Princess making this pitch,” Matt says after a while.

 

“She wanted to,” Shiro says. “But she knows she can’t just order you to do this, and that’s what it would sound like coming from her.”

 

“And I don’t owe you anything,” Matt says.

 

“Not much,” Shiro says. “Much less than I owe you.”

 

“You really think you could get them here without being detected?” Matt asks.

 

“Probably,” Shiro says. “Allura has a retainer, Coran, who could bring them most of the way, and even if he couldn’t, the Castle has programmable escape pods. We could probably program them to make several jumps, confuse anyone who’d try to follow them. Worst comes to worst, Xio, the oldest, she knows how to fly a cruiser. Not well enough to get through a firefight, but probably well enough to slip past one.”

 

“So I end up back in the war anyway,” Matt says bitterly. “Can’t escape, can we? I don’t know why I even tried.”

 

“No,” Shiro says. “No, you’d be their escape hatch. The absolute worst case scenario. They’d only come here if all six of us were dead.”

 

“And your retainer, Coran, he can’t take them?” Matt asks.

 

“He’s one of the last two full-blooded Alteans in the galaxy,” Shiro says. “They’re shifters, but they can’t hold the shapes of other species forever. He’s distinctive. They wouldn’t be safe with him, not for long.”

 

“I’ve never wanted to be a father,” Matt says. “Pidge doesn’t want to be a parent either, never did, even back when we were kids. We told our parents that they’d have to settle for grandparenting our cousins’ children.” He snorts. “I don’t think my dad cared. He wouldn’t have known what to do with grandchildren anyway.”

 

“He loved you both, though,” Shiro says. “A lot. I remember that.”

 

“He did,” Matt says. “He really did. Can I get some time to think about this before I give you an answer? It’s a lot to ask.”

 

“Sure,” Shiro says. “Take your time.”

 

“Not forever, though,” Matt says with a half-smile. “Your clock is ticking.”

 

He takes off his glasses to clean them on his shirt, although from what Shiro sees he’s just making them worse, spreading a fleck of oil on the left lens into an even worse smear. Maybe it’s just so he doesn’t have to look at Shiro. Shiro doesn’t blame him. There are plenty of days he doesn’t want to look at himself either.

 

“Speaking of which, how long are you here for?” Matt asks.

 

“They’re not expecting me back until tomorrow,” Shiro says. “…Can I spend the night here? I don’t feel like flying around a strange moon in the dark.”

 

“I don’t have a guest room or anything,” Matt says.

 

“That’s fine, I can sleep on the floor —” Shiro starts, but Matt rolls his eyes.

 

“You’re welcome to share the bed,” he says. “I was just going to say that I have night terrors sometimes, if you can handle those.”

 

“I do, too,” Shiro says. “Fewer than I used to, but — yeah. Still.”

 

“Great, so we can set each other off,” Matt says, but he grins when he says it, so Shiro’s pretty sure that’s a joke. Fairly sure.

 

“I brought stuff for dinner,” he says instead. “I wasn’t sure —”

 

“If I was living hand to mouth?” Matt interrupts. “No, but I won’t turn down off-planet food either. The cuisine here is pretty tuber-heavy, and my family tree may be basically one giant German potato, but even that has its limits. Do you miss the food from home?”

 

“What?” Shiro asks, startled.

 

“You’re Japanese, right?” Matt asks. “Not Japanese-American, actual Japanese-Japanese. I remember you still had an accent the first time I met you,” and there’s that grin again. “It was cute.”

 

“Thanks?” Shiro tries, and Matt stares at him for a tick then snorts, sliding off his stool.

 

“Right, your princess,” he says. “Come on, let’s go unpack your cruiser. I’ll show you the short way down.”

 

Matt doesn’t ask him anything else about food or home or Allura as they bundle back up and head outside, both bracing against the cold wind now whipping through the hills that rise around them. There’s so much sky out here; Shiro’s never lived in the country, has spent his entire life in apartment buildings and barracks and then the Castle, and he’s not sure he likes how exposed he feels, following Matt down a path barely wide enough to be a path, how achingly out of place in a land that so clearly wasn’t made for people, even if people have managed to carve out lives here anyway.

 

Matt seems more at home here, picking his way through the rocky grass with no sign of discomfort, but this man clearly isn’t the boy that Shiro knew so long ago, friendly and mischievous and free with his emotions, and this entire visit has felt off kilter. He’s not sure that Matt wants him here, or if Matt even knows himself, and he wonders now if he made a mistake coming here, if he should have sent Pidge or even Allura. He and Matt have so much history together; and yet, at the same time, so little. They were passing friendly as cadets, but never friends, and everything from Kerberos to the arena to Sendak was just months, a good chunk of which Shiro can’t even remember.

 

“Aioi,” he offers quietly.

 

Matt pauses and looks back at him. “What?”

 

“Where I’m from,” Shiro says. “Aioi, Hyōgo. And no, I don’t miss the food. My mom was a terrible cook. The Garrison cafeteria was actually a step up from home, if you can believe it.”

 

“Having eaten in the Garrison cafeteria — no, I don’t believe it,” Matt says, but it sounds teasing instead of accusatory.

 

“No, seriously,” Shiro says. “She couldn’t even make rice in a rice cooker, and those things are foolproof. I learned how to cook so I’d stop having to eat burned sludge.”

 

“Oh, good, a chef,” Matt says as they tromp across the goat field to the cruiser. “You can cook tonight.”

 

“That’s not being a very good host,” Shiro says, with a little grin of his own, and Matt laughs.

 

“I’m not a good host at all,” Matt agrees. “Ask Pidge.”

 

Despite what he says about his hosting abilities, Matt helps Shiro cook that night, bumping shoulders over a cutting board and the small burners shoved between a sink and what looks alarmingly like a half-dissected landmine, although Matt assures him that it’s actually just a piece of farm equipment he’s repairing and not explosive in the least.

 

“I’ve had my fill of bomb-making, thanks,” Matt says. “I’d rather not blow off any more pieces of myself.”

 

“Is that what happened?” Shiro asks, trying hard for casual.

 

“Scavenged, damaged tech and a shitty assistant,” Matt says. “I guess it was in the service of the rebellion, but it definitely wasn’t heroic.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. Matt shrugs.

 

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “It wasn’t my fault either. And my assistant died in the accident, so it’s not that satisfying to be mad at them. I’m surprised Pidge didn’t tell you.”

 

“They don’t really talk to me about you,” Shiro says. “And I don’t ask. I thought you might like your privacy.”

 

Matt’s quiet for a while, just the sound of his knife against the wooden cutting board, and finally says, “I don’t have a lot of secrets. You can ask me about things, if you have questions.”

 

“A ‘lot’ of secrets?” Shiro asks.

 

“Well, I _was_ a guerrilla rebel against a murderous galactic regime,” Matt says. “I have to have some secrets.”

 

“I’m good for now,” Shiro says. “But if I have questions… I’ll ask.”

 

They manage to throw together a passably good meal with a minimum of tubers, although Matt just sighs and says they’re unavoidable when Shiro realizes that he’s neglected to bring anything like a starchy base. The tubers aren’t even that bad — he was worried that they’d be on par with the tea, or worse, the water, but they don’t really taste like anything at all.

 

“That’s the problem,” Matt says when Shiro tells him this. “You get tired of nothing at all.”

 

“I’ll bring you stuff, the next time I come. Spices or herbs or — whatever can travel,” Shiro says impulsively, and only realizes what he’s promised when Matt blinks at him in surprise.

 

“Thanks,” Matt says. “That’d — that’d be great.”

 

Shiro doesn’t think of himself as an entitled person, but he’s used to being treated as the Black Paladin of Voltron when he goes places, used to yes-sir-no-sir and having to politely decline the most outrageous offers he gets, so it’s a bit of a surprise when Matt sets him to scrubbing the pots they used and then just leans up against the counter staring at him instead of helping.

 

“There’s plenty of room at the sink for two,” Shiro says.

 

“You’re only here for a night, I’m going to exploit the free labor while I can,” Matt says, and then: “Tell me about Alric.”

 

“What about him?”

 

“What’s he like?” Matt asks. “All I know is that he’s one, and he’s yours. And the princess’s.”

 

“Well, like you said, he’s one, so right now his main concerns are sleeping, eating, and chewing on things,” Shiro says. “But he can stand on his own, and Lance says he’ll probably be walking soon, even though he’s still wobbly. He’s been the one taking care of Alric, mostly. Alric’s still nursing, but other than that, Allura and I don’t get a lot of time with him.”

 

“That must be hard,” Matt says quietly.

 

“It won’t be forever,” Shiro says. “But — yeah. It’s hard. I know that I’m missing a lot. I didn’t want to be the kind of parent that was never there, but I guess I am right now.”

 

He stares down at his own hands in the cold water, at the half-submerged bowls and battered pots, anything other than Matt and the judgement he knows is coming — but then he feels something warm bump up against his shoulder, and he looks over to find Matt has sidled much closer, smiling ruefully, and there’s nothing but quiet sympathy in Matt’s gaze.

 

Shiro takes a moment to breathe, then continues. “He’s started talking, sort of. He knows mama, and dada, and Lance, although he calls him Lah. And no. He really likes no. I think sometimes he just says no to things for the novelty factor. But he’s also got some teeth coming in, so there’s a lot of no going around because of that, too. He’s not some horrendously difficult baby,” he hurriedly assures Matt. “He’s actually pretty laid-back.”

 

“No, it’s cool, I get it, teeth are hard,” Matt says. “His mom, your princess, she’s a shapeshifter, right? Does he shift too?”

 

“No,” Shiro says. “But for Alteans it doesn’t kick in until puberty.”

 

“Ha-ha!” Matt says triumphantly, then explains when Shiro looks at him askance: “I bet Pidge that the shapeshifting was a sex thing, like clownfish, but they tried to tell me it was an evolutionary defense mechanism. Wrong. They owe me money.” Then he shakes his head a bit, grinning ruefully. “Sorry. Emotional moment. Wrong time.”

 

Shiro smiles despite himself. “Don’t apologize. Allura always tells me I shouldn’t be so serious all the time. Emotional moments are fine, but it’s nice to laugh. Besides, I’ve had too many emotional moments lately.”

 

“I bet,” Matt says. “I don’t hear a lot out here, but what I do hear… it’s not good.”

 

“We’re trying,” Shiro says. “The Mnenmite System… They told us that their outer world defenses were fine and we didn’t check for ourselves, and by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. We were all stupid. Arrogant. It won’t happen again. But it’s really shaken everyone.”

 

“Including you,” Matt says.

 

“Including me,” Shiro agrees, and tries passing him a plate to dry.

 

Matt stares at it, unmoving, then says, “I’ll do it.”

 

“The plate?” Shiro asks.

 

“Your kid,” Matt says. “Kids. I’ll take them. If you need me to.”

 

“Thank you,” Shiro says, and his voice only shakes a little bit.

 

Matt waves it aside. “I’m not agreeing to it for gratitude, or so you owe me, anything like that.”

 

“But you’re agreeing to it, so I’m going to thank you,” Shiro tells him. “And I do owe you.”

 

“Let’s not get that out,” Matt says quietly. “I don’t want to balance that checkbook, not tonight.”

 

“That’s fair,” Shiro says.

 

After a moment, Matt picks up a dishrag and the wet plate Shiro set on the counter, and they finish the rest of the dishes in an uncomfortably loud silence, too many things between them to ever sit quietly. Matt doesn’t seem to be angry at him like Shiro had expected, or terrified of him like Shiro had secretly feared, but there’s an energy to him that’s hard to place, something equal parts wary and welcoming, and Shiro doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, if he’s even supposed to do anything here but get through tonight and leave in the morning.

 

It makes him more nervous than he’d like to admit, whatever uncertain thing is thrumming between them. He can handle it, whatever it is that Matt wants, but the not knowing, the having to guess and then inevitably getting it wrong… that’s worse.

 

Maybe that’s what Matt wants after all, this itching anxiety crawling along all of Shiro’s nerves, to leave him unsettled and uncertain this entire visit, some small measure of comfort and revenge against Shiro’s reappearance in his life — but Shiro doesn’t think so, as hard as it is to tell. The boy Shiro knew wouldn’t have wanted that, at least, and maybe there’s some of him left in this man now.

 

Matt retreats to his workbenches after they finish cleaning up from dinner, and Shiro sits down at his kitchen table, pulling out his tablet to sift through the previous day’s reports and trying to commit as much to memory as he can even as he pulls a few distinct threads out of the snarl of information before him.

 

He had a nearly eidetic memory when he was younger, endless straight rows of neatly sorted filing cabinets that helped him rise through the Garrison ranks as quickly as he did — but his memory isn’t great these days, hasn’t been ever since Kerberos, and he knows that he loses things he can’t afford to lose all the time, especially since a good chunk of their intelligence network just dropped off the map in the Mnenmite System. They’re still not sure who’s dead and who’s just hiding, but it’s thrown their nearby operations into chaos, frightening already skittish allies, and half of his and Allura’s jobs right now is just to seem like they know what’s happening and how to fix it, even if they don’t.

 

He’s exhausted, though, coming off a week of crisis after crisis — half of which could have easily been solved by subordinates if they’d kept their heads on straight instead of panicking and running to him — and the type is starting to blur in front of him. Keith was right, he probably should get reading glasses, but every time he remembers, something else always comes up, and he forgets until the next time he’s sitting at some table in the middle of the night and peering at the screen.

 

“You’re turning into an old man,” Matt says suddenly, and Shiro looks up to find him perched on his stool, watching with a smirk.

 

“What?”

 

“The way you’re reading your screen,” Matt explains. “I’m guessing you’re not just really interested in the individual pixels?”

 

“No,” Shiro admits. “My eyes are starting to go a little bit. My mom was the same way, I probably should have expected it.”

 

“I’m surprised that wasn’t one of the things that Haggar augmented,” Matt says. “Having a nearsighted Champion kind of defeats the purpose of any other mods.”

 

“I’m not nearsighted, I have an astigmatism,” Shiro corrects him. “And it wasn’t noticeable when I was younger. I guess they didn’t expect me to live long enough for it to be a problem.”

 

“More fool them, right?” Matt says, but Shiro notices that he’s flexing the fingers on his left hand, wincing a bit.

 

“Is your hand okay?” Shiro asks.

 

“Not really,” Matt says. “It’s the middle and ring finger, mostly. They got broken again before they’d really healed, so they stiffen up sometimes.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says helplessly.

 

“You were trying to protect me,” Matt says. “You did, in the end. And hey, the index finger is fine, I managed to not break that one again, so it’s not the whole hand.”

 

“Well, if you ever need a hand, I have an extra one to lend you,” Shiro says eventually, wiggling the fingers on his prosthetic, and Matt laughs.

 

“A pun!” he says delightedly. “I knew Takashi Shirogane had a sense of humor lurking somewhere in there!”

 

“It’s a grower, not a shower,” Shiro says, just to make Matt laugh again, and he does.

 

“Who knew you’d get so ribald in your old age,” Matt says. “It’s always the quiet ones, I guess.”

 

“Eh, I know some pretty loud ribald ones too,” Shiro says. “Lance—” just as Matt says, “McKlane—”

 

“That guy,” Matt says. “You know, he propositioned me, I think his fourth day at the Garrison? And it was in the lap pool, so I didn’t have my glasses on, and then he didn’t even recognize me when we ran into each other the next day.”

 

“I didn’t know that, but now that I do, I’m never going to let him forget it,” Shiro says. “Did you take him up on it?”

 

“Nah,” Matt says. “I was too shy. And I’m glad I didn’t, actually. I get the sense that he was working through some things, because he cut a swath through our cadet class and then came out as trans a few months later and freaked out every single straight guy he’d slept with. It was pretty funny.”

 

Shiro shakes his head. “I’d bet money that he made an offer to me at some point, because… well, you know, but if he did, I’ve blocked it out. And then after all that, he ends up with one of the ten people at the Garrison that he _didn’t_ try to sleep with when he was a cadet.”

 

“People end up in all sorts of strange combinations,” Matt says, absently pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

 

“Oh, I know,” Shiro says, thinking of Allura.

 

“Your princess?” Matt asks, and Shiro looks at him in surprise.

 

“You didn’t… You’re not telepathic now, right?”

 

“God no,” Matt says. “Why is that the first place your mind went?”

 

“We live in a galaxy with time travel, shapeshifters, quintessence, magic lion war machines, and what’s basically warp speed interplanetary travel from Star Trek,” Shiro says. “Artificial telepathy wouldn’t even be the weirdest thing I’ve seen this week.”

 

“I saw the look on your face and I guessed,” Matt says. “I’ve never seen Shiro-in-love before, but you don’t need to be telepathic to figure it out.”

 

“I’ve been told that I’m kind of… obvious when it comes to her,” Shiro admits.

 

“Yeah, but don’t be self-conscious about it or anything,” Matt says. “It’s a good look for you.”

 

“There hasn’t been anyone for you?” Shiro asks tentatively. “I know you said you lived alone, but…”

 

“No,” Matt says. “No lost loves or interplanetary pining or, I don’t know, torrid affairs with goatherds. I haven’t been a monk or anything, I’ve got some stories, but… no.”

 

“I got lucky,” Shiro says. “But that’s me. If that’s not what you’re looking for — that’s fine too. I know not everyone wants what I want.”

 

“Yeah, guess not,” Matt says, in a tone Shiro can’t place. “What’s on your tablet that’s got you nodding off on top of it?”

 

“You don’t even want to know,” Shiro says, but Matt just levels an unimpressed look at him. “Fine: cereal grass yields.”

 

“Didn’t know you were into agriculture,” Matt comments.

 

“I’m not,” Shiro says. “I hate it, actually. I know it’s important, but it’s so boring.”

 

“Then why are you reading about cereal grass?” Matt asks.

 

“Because we’re running out,” Shiro says, quietly. “The food that most of our garrisoned soldiers in the N1 quadrant really live on came from those cereals, and some of the supply is local but most comes from N4 and got to N1 quadrant through the Mnenmite System, so we’re cut off. The harvests were bad this year on their local suppliers, and we’re already looking at shortages; we might be looking at famine.”

 

“You know what, you were right, I didn’t want to know,” Matt says tightly.

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says.

 

“I asked,” Matt says. “I should have known that you weren’t, I dunno, reading a romance novel. You’re all about duty. I bet you haven’t read for fun in years.”

 

“I have,” Shiro protests. “I do. Maze, one of the kids, she likes to read, so I introduced her to _Akira_. I reread it with her.”

 

“I think I read that when I was at the Garrison,” Matt says. “Isn’t that a little dark for a ten-year-old?”

 

“Not for Maze,” Shiro says. “And she’s not a ten-year-old, not really. She just looks like it.”

 

“Yeah, I remember what you said about where she came from,” Matt says. “I never met any of the ones who survived, but I remember liberating areas with labs like those. And the cleanups afterwards.”

 

“She’s doing really well,” Shiro says. “Nothing like how she was when Pidge found her. She’s thriving. It still sounds weird to say, because I wouldn’t trust them with a houseplant, but Keith and Lance are good parents.”

 

“I wouldn’t think someone like that _could_ thrive,” Matt says quietly.

 

“She can,” Shiro says. “She is. I think you’d like her. She likes Harry Potter and sarcasm.”

 

“That is a fun combination,” Matt says. “But let’s hope I never have to meet her.”

 

“I really am sorry for bringing the war here,” Shiro tells him. “I know you came here to leave it behind. But I promise, I’m not going to ask you to fight, I’m not going to ask you to come back with me, and I’ll stop talking about it. That favor, the kids, that’s it. That’s the only thing I came here for.”

 

“That’s it?” Matt asks.

 

“That’s it,” Shiro confirms. “I’m not going to ask anything else of you.”

 

“Well, thanks, I guess,” Matt says eventually, and turns back to his tinkering while Shiro turns back to his agricultural reports and tries to figure out a way around their distribution problem, or at least tries to absorb enough information that his mind can be working on it in the background and he won’t sound like a complete fool if anyone asks him about it. Maybe he should ask Pidge; their mind works twistily enough that they might be able to come up with some way to attack the problem from the side.

 

Hell, maybe he should ask Maze. He doubts she’d actually come up with a solution, but she’d probably enjoy the challenge, and he’s given up on trying to impose any sort of age-appropriateness or structure to the weird mix of homeschooling, tutoring, and being shoved at randomly knowledgeable babysitters that Xio and now Maze are growing up with, none of the rigidity that he remembers from his own schooling. They mostly learn what they want and what’s available to be taught to them, and it seems to work for them.

 

Alric is too young for Shiro to be worrying about his formal education yet, but maybe he and Allura should have that conversation sometime. They have so many hopes for his future, but maybe they need to start having plans, too, other than what would happen to him if they die. Maybe it would help them out of this dark tunnel they’ve found themselves in lately, where the destination seems inevitable instead of possible, the tracks leading to only one end that Shiro can see, no matter how many cereal grain reports he reads.

 

Even with whatever energy Matt is giving off, sparking like the small soldering gun in his hands, Shiro eventually finds himself too tired to keep reading, and he puts down his tablet with a sigh, resigning himself to adding this to the pile of reports that will inevitably be waiting for him when he gets back and some more late night planning sessions with Allura. He’s still not satisfied with his understanding of the situation, but he’s not going to be much use to the war efforts if he can’t stay awake during tomorrow’s meetings, or worse, crashes Black into this system’s asteroid belt before he even gets back.

 

He tries to be unobtrusive as he gets ready for sleep and then awkwardly settles into Matt’s bed, uncomfortably aware of how much space he’s taking up in it. He doesn’t ask Matt to set down his tools and come to bed — he can fall asleep with the lights on, he usually leaves one on anyways, Matt shouldn’t have to change his sleep habits just because Shiro is here — but Matt sets down his tools anyway when he sees Shiro’s retreated to his bed.

 

“Tired already?” Matt asks. “Or were your cereal grains too boring to stay awake for?”

 

“Both,” Shiro admits. “It’s been a long week. But you can keep working if you want, I can fall asleep with noise going.”

 

Matt rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to clank around and keep you awake, I know how loud this stuff is. I’m almost done for tonight anyway, my hands are starting to cramp up.”

 

“If you’re sure,” Shiro says, and Matt nods and slides off his stool to begin his own bedtime ablutions, brushing his teeth over the kitchen sink before stripping down while Shiro looks politely away. He hadn’t really thought about it, but he’s surprised when Matt sits down on the side of the bed and begins to take off his prosthetics and then the liners beneath, wincing and kneading at the scar tissue at the end of his right leg.

 

“Are you alright?” Shiro asks, and Matt shrugs.

 

“Neuroma,” he says. “It’s not a big deal, it’s just been a long day and I probably need to adjust the fit again.”

 

“If you need anything — parts —” Shiro tries.

 

“Yeah, maybe,” Matt says, although he doesn’t sound enthusiastic. “I’ll check what I have, see if there’s anything I need that I can’t get local.”

 

“Whatever you need. Even if you want to rebuild them from scratch,” Shiro says. “These seem… heavy.”

 

“They are,” Matt says, “and really uncomfortable if I’m laying down, but hey, I worked with what I had. You don’t take yours off to sleep?”

 

“No,” Shiro says. “It’s no heavier than my other arm. Whatever Haggar did to it — it doesn’t rub or hurt or anything.”

 

“You fucker,” Matt says, but he sounds fond as he neatly lines his prosthetic legs up next to the bed and then wriggles under the covers with Shiro, turning off the light as he goes.

 

At first Shiro thinks it might be one of those rare, blessed nights where his mind will quiet and he can actually fall asleep without tossing and turning and laying awake examining every mistake he made that day — but tonight is apparently going to be one of the other kind of nights, the even worse kind.

 

Maybe it’s the darkness; or the strange energy of the day; or that he’s in a new place; or even that he has a bedmate, although he shares a bed with Allura at home, because Matt is nothing like her, doesn’t feel like her or smell like her or even breathe in the same way; or it’s everything combined. In any case, Shiro can feel his heart start to pick up, even as he forces himself to breathe evenly and normally, his skin prickling in sudden sharp awareness of everything around him. No matter how he subtly repositions himself, he can’t shake the feeling of the new position being too vulnerable, and forget about closing his eyes; he can barely look to one side without having to then look to the other one, his every instinct screeching about sightlines as he tries to make out shapes in the darkness and then frantically tries to unsee them as his mind fills in the gaps in his vision.

 

Despite Matt’s joke about setting each other off, Shiro really doesn’t want to upset Matt with his own stupid problems, and so he tries not to move too much, to breathe normally, curling onto his side with his back to Matt, even though deep inside him something is starting to scream.

 

Then Matt’s voice floats out of the darkness, a gentle whisper at Shiro’s back — “Can’t sleep?” — and the sound is a lifeline that Shiro grabs onto, rolling over to face him, even as he tries not to sound too desperate when he says, “Yes.”

 

“Normal can’t sleep or shit brain can’t sleep?” Matt asks.

 

“The latter,” Shiro admits. “I’m not — Being in a new place, it’s hard.”

 

“It’s okay,” Matt says. “Me too. I’m not used to having someone else here.”

 

“I guess we’re setting each other off after all,” Shiro says, and Matt laughs softly.

 

“I guess so,” he says. “I wish we weren’t. I like having you here.”

 

“I wasn’t sure,” Shiro says. “You’ve seemed so… I wasn’t sure.”

 

“Well, I do,” Matt tells him. “And not just because you’re a change of pace from the goats.”

 

“I thought you didn’t have any,” Shiro says.

 

“I don’t,” Matt says. “Walking a lot with these prosthetics really messes up my back. But you’d be amazed how often those little shits find their way up my hill anyway,” but he sounds… distracted. Far off, in a way that doesn’t mean anything good for people like them.

 

“Hey,” Shiro says, “are you okay? Am I — Is there something I can do?”

 

Matt sighs in frustration. “This is stupid,” he says. “But — are you okay with being touched?”

 

“Uh, sure,” Shiro says, but he nearly jumps out of his skin regardless when he feels something brush his hand — but it’s just Matt, he realizes, Matt reaching out to cautiously take Shiro’s hand with his own, thumb tracing Shiro’s life line before gripping him a little tighter, surer now that he knows Shiro isn’t pulling away.

 

“There,” Matt says. “Now my brain knows you’re really here.”

 

“I’m really here,” Shiro agrees, and gently squeezes back.

 

It should feel ridiculous, laying there just holding hands across the three feet between them, but it doesn’t. It’s good. Grounding — not an anchor, but a lightning rod, and Shiro holds on and wills his fear to simply crackle through him as it strikes, make its home in the dirt so far beneath their bodies and leave them both unharmed, even as he feels a different kind of energy building in the space between them, at their single point of contact.

 

It’s like the air before a storm, prickling over his already hypersensitive nerves — and Shiro’s suddenly intensely aware of Matt’s hand in his; the sound of his breathing; the heat of his body; the faint smell of him lingering in the sheets, in the quilts tangled around them, in the pillow beneath Shiro’s head.

 

“Tell me about your princess,” Matt says suddenly.

 

Shiro blinks in confusion at the question, but he’ll never miss a chance to talk about Allura, so he tells Matt, “She’s… incredible. Kind and brave and clever, a true leader, one of those rare people who can be a warrior and a peacemaker at once. She’s one of the most determined people I’ve ever met, and I’m friends with Keith.”

 

He laughs quietly. “She loves sparkly things, and hates sour food, and pulls pranks on Pidge when they prank her, and she critiques any movie we watch that has fight scenes, and I don’t know why, but she loves me back, and some days just that is enough to get out of bed for.”

 

“She makes you happy,” Matt says softly.

 

“Every day,” Shiro tells him.

 

Matt’s quiet for a while, and Shiro starts wondering if he’s been reading this wrong, if it’s just his nerves scraped raw by old pain, picking up on something no more real than whatever Matt sees in the dark — but then Matt shifts forward and asks, barely loud enough to hear, “So does she know that you’re whispering in the dark to other men?”

 

“She knows,” Shiro says, relieved that he’s been reading this right after all. If Matt’s asking that… “Of course she knows. I would never do anything if she didn’t say it was okay. But I don’t — it’s not like I do this all the time. Or ever. Not with strangers.”

 

“I bet you know a lot of people now, being the Black Paladin and all,” Matt whispers back. “Plenty of admirers to choose from.”

 

“They’re still strangers,” Shiro says softly. “Everyone we meet — they want something from us, but not from Shiro and Allura. They want something from the Black Paladin of Voltron, or the Princess of Altea, or both.”

 

“And if I want something from you?” Matt asks.

 

“That’s different,” Shiro says. “You’re different.”

 

“We weren’t together,” Matt says. “Were we? I don’t remember everything.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Shiro says. “I don’t remember everything either. But I don’t think so.”

 

“If we were, I guess it wasn’t very memorable,” Matt says dryly.

 

“No, you were under my command,” Shiro says slowly, dredging up the words.

 

“Nominally,” Matt interjects.

 

“Nominally still counts,” Shiro says. “I wouldn’t have, not with someone under my command. But I think — afterwards. I think maybe I wanted to ask you, after the mission was over.”

 

“Is the mission over now?” Matt asks.

 

“Well, you’re not under my command anymore,” Shiro says. “Nominally or otherwise.”

 

He hears Matt move rather than see him, a rustle of blankets in the dark as the fog seals them away from any light, and then Matt is pressed up right next to him, pressing a kiss to Shiro’s bare shoulder, then his neck, and finally his mouth when Shiro turns to meet him.

 

“I don’t have a lot of leverage, not without my prosthetics,” Matt warns him after he breaks the kiss.

 

“You’re smart,” Shiro says. “We’ll figure it out.”

 

They kiss for a while, lazy and slow, undressing piece by piece, but the darkness in the room is making Shiro nervous; he can’t see a thing, and can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something here that he should be afraid of, that he’s not safe here, that in this dark someone could sneak up on him and —

 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Matt asks gently.

 

“Can we turn on a light?” Shiro asks. “I understand if you don’t want to see me, but not being able to see anything at all is… kind of freaking me out.”

 

“Why do you think I don’t want to see you?” Matt asks, muffled as he rolls away — to turn on the lamp beside the bed, apparently, because the room is suddenly filled with a dim but steady yellow glow, and Shiro can see Matt’s face clearly now, and all the exits and corners of the room, too.

 

“I can tell that I’m a trigger for you,” Shiro says quietly.

 

“You’re not a trigger for me,” Matt says unconvincingly.

 

“That’s why I stayed away,” Shiro says. “I didn’t think you’d want to see me and remember. I didn’t want to bring up anything for you, especially since it’s been so long.”

 

“Or for yourself?” Matt asks, waspishly.

 

“…Or for myself,” Shiro admits.

 

Matt huffs, making a face that looks so much like one of Pidge’s that Shiro smiles despite himself, even though Pidge is the last person Shiro should be thinking about when he’s mostly naked in bed with their brother.

 

“Okay, so maybe I am triggered by you a little, but it’s not your fault, you don’t have to be a martyr about it,” Matt says. “And I’m not going to let Haggar of all people stop me from having sex, especially when I’m getting to have sex with you.”

 

“Well, when you put it like that,” Shiro says.

 

“But if this is too much for you, that’s okay,” Matt says, putting on a pretty good show of ease. “Sleeping with me is more complicated than it is your princess, I get that. Cripple logistics and PTSD flashbacks aren’t sexy.”

 

“No, it’s not, it’s not that,” Shiro says. “I want you, I want this, I just don’t want to hurt you, not again. Even accidentally.”

 

“Accidents happen, that’s why they’re called accidents,” Matt says. “Look, think of it as exposure therapy,” and winks.

 

“Another pun,” Shiro sighs.

 

“Oh, get ready, I have so many more and all of them are just as bad,” Matt says. He hesitates, then asks: “Can we figure out a way so I’m on top? Or at least not underneath you. You’re right, that’s… not good.”

 

“…On top?” Shiro queries.

 

“Ha, no, I’m not asking you for _that_ ,” Matt says. “Not tonight. I don’t feel like trying some long, drawn-out thing, and topping is a production for me. I guess the other way around would be easier, but I don’t like bottoming.”

 

“I do,” Shiro admits. “I really, really do.”

 

Matt stares at him for a second and then gets it and laughs.

 

“Shapeshifter, huh?” he asks. “That must be fun.”

 

“That’s not why I’m with her,” Shiro says, harshly, and Matt stops laughing.

 

“I wasn’t implying anything like that,” Matt says. “I heard you before. It’s just — I’ve met other shifters, and most of them seem to like playing around with it when it comes to sex. I would too.”

 

“That’s not what I’d expect from someone from Earth,” Shiro says.

 

“Earth is fucked up,” Matt says, bluntly. “Doesn’t mean I have to be too. At least, not in that way. I’m plenty fucked up already.”

 

“And you’re really not bothered by… well, me?” Shiro asks.

 

“Not enough to stop,” Matt says. “And I won’t fall apart if you touch me. Actually, I’d really like you to touch me right now.”

 

“Can I —” Shiro starts, and rolls them, pulling Matt up on top of him until they’re laying chest to chest, Matt settled in between Shiro’s splayed legs with his face hovering scant inches from Shiro’s.

 

“Oh, this is good,” Matt breathes. “I like this.”

 

It is good, Shiro thinks as he pulls Matt back down for a kiss, finally safe enough to close his eyes. Matt would be freaked out if their positions were reversed, with Shiro looming over him, but having Matt on top of him like this doesn’t feel like looming at all, even though Shiro can barely see anything past Matt’s face, Matt’s hands running over Shiro’s shoulders and then into his hair, Matt’s body starting to rock into his, the unhurried rhythm of someone who knows that they have all night with whoever’s underneath them. Matt’s not that heavy, built bird-light like his sibling, but the warm weight of him still feels good, ballast to hold Shiro down to this moment now, this misty grey moon and the man who lives here.

 

Eventually Matt does speed up, ordering Shiro how to help brace him for leverage and shuddering out his orgasm with his breath loud and hot against Shiro’s skin, and then lazily jerks him off with a level of smirking benevolence that might irritate another man — but for Shiro, it makes it even better, an echo of some of the things that he and Allura do in bed, and he wonders if Matt can just tell; if it’s writ somewhere on his skin that clearly, how badly he wants someone else to carry the burden of control, even if just for the night.

 

This isn’t the same feeling that he has with her. There’s something sharper about Matt than Allura, an edge instead of an anchor — but Shiro likes it. He’s already promised Matt that he’ll be back. Maybe next time, he’ll ask him about it; see how far Matt’s knowing smirk will take them.

 

Matt kisses him through his climax, and keeps kissing him as he starts to come down, the brief urgency of orgasm unspooling back into the slow rhythm of before until they’re just making out for the sake of it, Matt stroking up and down his side, tracing his hipbone, long sweeping touches that don’t go anywhere and aren’t meant to. Eventually Shiro yawns a little between kisses and Matt snorts out a laugh and they pull apart, settling in for sleep, although they’re still facing each other.

 

“You know I’m not trying to repay you or something,” Shiro says quietly.

 

“I know,” Matt mumbles into the pillow. “If I thought you were, I would have stopped you. I don’t want pity or obligation.”

 

“Then it’s a good thing I don’t feel either one of those things for you,” Shiro tells him. “I just like you.”

 

“I like you too, Shiro,” Matt says. “Now go to sleep.”

 

After a moment, though, he starts wiggling closer and closer to Shiro, who frowns at him. “What are you doing?”

 

“I’m using you to block the light,” Matt informs him.

 

“We could just turn it off,” Shiro says.

 

Matt raises an eyebrow. “Do you want it off?”

 

“No,” Shiro admits. “I usually leave one on.”

 

“Then we leave it on so you sleep, so I sleep, and you’re big enough that you can hide me from the terrible bright light,” Matt says. “Everyone wins.”

 

Shiro should probably argue, insist that Matt’s comfort should come before his own, especially when Matt is already doing so much for them, already rearranging his life here to accommodate something far bigger and more terrible than a single flickering lightbulb breaking the restful dark — but he doesn’t want to, and maybe Matt really isn’t expecting him to. Maybe he can accept this small kindness, just this once, and the strings attached won’t strangle him; maybe tonight they can just hold him, bound steady and safe.

 

“Okay,” he says, and dares to lean forward to press a kiss to the corner of Matt’s mouth, and Matt rolls his eyes a little at the gesture but smiles at him nonetheless. “Okay.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings will be updated as the chapters go on. For this chapter, content warnings for: symptoms of PTSD and references to violence. Also, I play... slightly loose with the timeline of the Kerberos mission. Artistic license.


	2. Second (Part One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

Shiro does bring spices on his next visit — everything that Hunk said would travel well and keep, a whole satchel’s worth of packets of color and taste, bright as a bouquet in this grey place. He also brings Allura and Alric.

 

“Well, this is a surprise,” Matt says when they crest the hill.

 

“A good one, I hope,” Allura says. “May we come inside? It’s quite cold out here; personally, I enjoy it, but I doubt Alric feels the same way.”

 

Bundled up in Shiro’s arms in his own little coat and hat, Alric makes a grumpy noise of agreement.

 

“Right, yeah, of course,” Matt says, looking more off-balance than Shiro’s seen him yet.

 

He leads them around to the door and gestures them inside, where they juggle Alric between them as they unburden themselves of their coats and weapons. Shiro’s occupied with wrestling a squirming Alric out of his coat when he notices that Matt and Allura have stilled, staring at each other like cats deciding whether or not to fight.

 

“Princess,” Matt says, finally, although he doesn’t make any move to bow.

 

“Allura, please,” she says, smiling warmly. “I don’t hold with titles with my friends.”

 

“I wasn’t sure that I counted,” Matt says.

 

“You’ve offered sanctuary to my child,” Allura says softly. “Of course you count.”

 

“I’m surprised that you trust me with him, actually,” Matt says. “You don’t know me from Adam.”

 

Allura barely blinks at the foreign expression. “Pidge has vouched for you,” she says. “As has Shiro. And to be perfectly candid, that’s one of the reasons why I’m here, to meet you and see this place for myself.”

 

“Well, I’m happy to give you the tour, although there’s not much to see unless you’re really into rocks and herd animals,” Matt says. “What was the other reason?”

 

“Shiro asked me to come,” Allura says.

 

“Huh,” Matt says, darting a look at Shiro. “That’s — Okay.”

 

“Actually, if you feel up to it, I really would love that tour before it gets dark,” Allura says brightly, and breaks their standoff with one smooth step around Matt, peering around the room with her hands clasped politely. “We can’t be away for more than a day, so unfortunately this won’t be a long visit, but I’d like to see as much as I can while I’m here.”

 

Matt still looks unsettled — by Alric or Allura, Shiro’s not sure — but he rallies, gesturing around to the battered furniture, the coiled cables hanging from the exposed roof beams, the bed with its tangle of quilts, and explains, “Well, what you see is kind of what you get in here. I live alone and no one else really comes up here. I mostly work as a tinkerer, so this doubles as my workshop, but sometimes I get called down to the village for bigger projects.”

 

“I wouldn’t think there would be much mechanization here,” Allura comments. “Sorry, one moment — Shiro, I think he wants the —”

 

“Teething thing, yeah, hold on,” Shiro mutters, passing Alric to her as he digs through their bags for the battered teething ring he’s really hoping he remembered to pack.

 

“No, not a lot of tech here, but what they have is all old, so it keeps breaking, and that keeps me fed,” Matt says. “Do you need me to hold something?”

 

“No — here we go,” Shiro says, gratefully fishing the ring out from the bottom of the bag; the prospect of an evening without something for Alric to chew on makes him wince even to think about.

 

“Do you do anything with the land around your home?” Allura asks politely. “Shiro mentioned something about… ‘goats’?”

 

“Goats? Oh, yeah, the herd animals around here kind of look like an animal from our planet,” Matt says, gesturing between him and Shiro. “Only these have more legs. They aren’t actually goats, but that’s what I’ve been calling them in my head. Did you have anything like them on your planet?”

 

Allura does blink at that, enough that Shiro can tell that Matt’s unsettled her. “On Altea?”

 

“Altea, yeah,” Matt says, with a kind of deliberate casualness that makes Shiro think that he knows that his innocuous comment is anything but. No living beings but Allura and Coran remember their planet, and certainly no one asks her about it, politely deferring to her grief, and maybe even more to their own horror at the scale of the destruction — if a people as powerful as the Alteans were so utterly annihilated, then what hope is there for us?

 

For all the years they’ve been together, Shiro hasn’t asked her much about Altea either, and she hasn’t asked him much about Earth. The past was dead and should stay dead, he’d thought; he may be a man stuck in time, never quite healed from what happened when he was nineteen, the things done to him and the things he’d done himself — but he and Allura, they make their home in the now, and in the future they’re building together. But he'd never actually asked.

 

“No, we didn’t,” Allura says after a moment. “Or if we did, I certainly didn’t know about them, but I imagine you couldn’t tell me about every animal on your planet, either.” Matt quirks a smile and nods. “My education was heavier on politics and history than animal husbandry. Are there any birds around here?”

 

“Not many,” Matt says. “A few hunting birds from time to time, some smaller ones. Why?”

 

“The capital city where I grew up, it didn’t have ‘goats’, but it did have birds,” Allura says. “So many of them.  All the colors you could imagine and then some. They sang so loudly in the morning that you could hear them through the castle walls.”

 

“Altea sounds wonderful,” Matt says.

 

“It was,” Allura says. “So many parts of it were ugly and brutal, but the parts of it that were mine, my home — they were so beautiful.”

 

It’s all Shiro can do not to stare at her in surprise. Allura is all fire and steel, no kind of dissembler — but she’s royalty, raised to reveal her true feelings discerningly, and never to strangers. In the time since she took up the burden of leadership, she’s grown into a masterful politician, and Shiro’s seen her use her warmth as a weapon plenty of times, disarming her opponents with a smile and genuine friendliness.

 

He’s never heard her sound this sad, though.

 

Apparently Matt takes it as the gesture it’s meant to be — whatever gesture that is — because his posture relaxes, and the room loses some more of the strange tension quivering between them.

 

“I guess it’s beautiful out here, too,” Matt offers. “In its own way. I don’t do anything with the land here, but I can show you around my piece of it, if you’d like.”

 

“I would like that very much,” Allura tells him.

 

“You two go,” Shiro says. “I’ve already seen it. I’ll stay here with Alric.”

 

“Don’t want to go out in the cold again?” Matt asks wryly.

 

“That too,” Shiro admits, and Allura laughs and kisses Alric on the forehead and then Shiro on the cheek.

 

“Both of you be good,” she says. “We’ll be back soon.”

 

“So,” Shiro hears her say as she and Matt start out the door. “Tell me more about these ‘goats’—”

 

“I guess it’s just you and me for a while,” Shiro tells Alric, who’s already squirming to be put down, bored with conversations he can’t yet understand and no doubt eager to find small, dirty things that he can put in his mouth. Matt’s floor is still clear of any things Shiro can see, large or small, but Alric has a talent for finding them nonetheless, so he sets Alric down on the floor and then carefully helps him to standing, Alric holding onto his hands for support and laughing delightedly as Shiro guides him through a few awkward, stomping steps.

 

It wasn’t an easy decision to try for a child, as badly as they wanted one. The galaxy has so many hybrids, but it’s still a risky business, and there’s been so much uncertainty with Alric — whether he would even be possible in the first place, whether he would be born healthy, whether he would age like his mother or his father, whether he’d be a shifter or forever consigned to a single form.

 

It’s still possible that Shiro’s son will outlive him by centuries, but so far, Alric has sped through his babyhood at human speed, much faster than Allura was ready for. Every day it seems that he does something new.

 

Shiro’s proud as any parent at those milestones, even if most of them he has to hear through Lance — the first word (which he missed); the first time Alric sat up (which he also missed); the first time Alric stood on his own, gripping Shiro’s hands and then briefly letting go, because through some measure of grace, Shiro was actually there for that — but sometimes Alric astounds him just by breathing, by sleeping, by laughing… By existing in the first place, this person who wasn’t and then suddenly was, an idea that became a soul.

 

Shiro doesn’t remember his mom ever saying anything like that about him, but when he’d tried to explain it to Keith, Keith had just nodded along, looking completely unsurprised.

 

“Yeah,” Keith had said with his usual eloquence. “That — Yeah. That happens.”

 

“Do you ever stop feeling like that?” Shiro asked.

 

“Haven’t yet,” Keith said. “But I’ll let you know.”

 

Shiro tries hard not to be resentful of Keith, who actually got to be present for his first daughter’s babyhood, gets to be a parent to both his children instead of an occasional babysitter. Shiro doesn’t always succeed. Every time he greets Alric after a separation, there’s a whispering fear that Alric won’t even recognize him, that he’ll shy away from his father the way he’s starting to shy away from strangers, that he’ll react to Shiro with fear instead of joy or his usual easygoing indifference — and so he treasures these small moments that he can spend with Alric, being _present_ for Alric, talismans against the dark things that move in his head.

 

Shiro’s settled down on the floor with Alric when Matt and Allura return from their walk. Alric is happily beating one of Matt’s metal plates with a spoon and chortling to himself over the ensuing racket; Matt looks startled by the sudden explosion of noise when they open the door, but Allura just sweeps over to drop a kiss on Shiro’s forehead and swings Alric into her arms, exclaiming, “A musician!”

 

“A percussionist, at least,” Shiro says wryly, and hauls himself off the floor, collecting the forgotten kitchenware as he goes. “Although his sense of rhythm could use some work.”

 

“Nonsense,” Allura says. “Alric, don’t listen to your father, I’m sure you’re wonderful.”

 

“Are these plates okay if he puts them in his mouth?” Shiro asks Matt.

 

“Well, I eat off of them, so I sure hope so,” Matt replies.

 

“Here, he’ll poke your eye out with the spoon but he can have this back to play with,” Shiro tells Allura, handing Alric the plate, which Alric promptly smacks her in the face with.

 

“Alric, darling, I’m not a cymbal,” Allura says, shifting him so that he’s aimed in another direction.

 

“How was the tour?” Shiro asks.

 

“Cold, wet, and steep,” Allura says. “But lovely nonetheless. You were right, Matt, about how beautiful it is out here. It takes some looking, but once you find it, you can’t stop seeing it.”

 

“It gets a lot less beautiful if your heating is broken, trust me,” Matt says, sitting down heavily on one of the battered chairs at his kitchen table, although he has to shift a pile of junk off the seat first. “Before mechanization really came, the locals used to heat their homes with… well, it’s basically peat. Compressed dead plants,” he clarifies for a frowning Allura. “Some of the more traditional ones still do. They’re not big fans of change here.”

 

“Do you know much about the local people?” Allura enquires.

 

“Not a lot,” Matt says. “I’m not exactly in the inner circle. But I know they’ve been here for a while, and this moon was never terraformed.”

 

“Yes, I don’t think anyone would design a landscape like this one,” Allura says. “Or could.”

 

“I’m not sure why you’d want to,” Shiro says. “Unless you were a goat.”

 

“I met one!” Allura says brightly. “It wasn’t terribly impressed with me, and it did try to eat the hem of my coat, but it let me pet it for a moment. It was much softer than it looked.”

 

“They’re a big thing around here,” Matt says. “Goats, goat-sourced dairy, and tubers, that’s pretty much the lifeblood of their economy. I’m probably one of the only people out here who doesn’t have at least one.”

 

“I would say that you could get some and Xio could mind them, give her something to do, but then you’d have to get a dog or something to mind her,” Shiro says.

 

“You don’t give her enough credit,” Allura argues.

 

“I give her enough credit to take her rock climbing,” Shiro says. “Although a wiser man probably wouldn’t.”

 

“That much of a handful, is she?” Matt asks.

 

“She’s passionate,” Allura says, diplomatically. “She knows her own mind.”

 

“Yeah, I know that’s code for high-strung and stubborn,” Matt says. “But don’t worry, I won’t go back on my promise or anything.”

 

“And we’re tremendously grateful,” Allura says. “I know that it’s not a small thing, what we’re asking.”

 

Matt shrugs. “They’re kids. They don’t deserve to be hung out to dry just because I’m uncomfortable around them.”

 

“Well, would you like to meet one?” Allura asks, and plops Alric onto Matt’s lap without waiting for him to reply. “Here, he’ll sit up on his own, but it’s best to give him some support nonetheless; I’d rather he didn’t get excited and throw himself to the floor.”

 

Matt stares at Alric doubtfully, but gamely says “Hello, Alric,” in a tone so serious that Shiro laughs. For his part, Alric regards Matt with an expression of deep suspicion, clearly trying to decide whether this stranger is scary enough to cry.

 

“He likes silly faces,” Allura offers, demonstrating, and Matt mimics her, enough to make Alric’s suspicion temporarily fade into confusion.

 

“He’s not great with new people at this age,” Shiro offers. “But you two seem to be doing well,” which is when Alric decides that he’s had enough of this stranger and starts to cry.

 

“I think you should take him back,” Matt says, looking slightly panicked.

 

“Calming him isn’t that difficult,” Allura says. “And he should get used to you. Here, he enjoys distraction, cuddles, and a soothing voice.”

 

“Like a dog,” Shiro adds helpfully, handing him the plate that Alric dropped.

 

Matt glares at him, Alric still wailing in his arms, and Shiro can’t help it; he laughs, as Matt alternates between muttering dire threats at him and mumbling soft-voiced at Alric, first entreatments to calm down and then when he runs out of those, a steady stream of technobabble that means about as much to Shiro as it does to Alric, and eventually Alric’s tears dry up and his screams turn to gurgles, happily waving his plate around from his perch on Matt’s lap.

 

“That was… an ordeal,” Matt says, looking slightly wild-eyed. “Does that happen a lot?”

 

“Yes,” Shiro says honestly. “He’s a baby. They don’t understand a lot of the world, and they don’t have a lot of ways to express that. But it gets easier,” and then amends that to: “It becomes second nature. And you did pretty well, even on your first try.”

 

“Guess I have some talents in this arena after all,” Matt says.

 

“Shiro was terribly awkward with Xio,” Allura assures him. “But he got better, and by the time Alric was born, he was passably decent with infants.”

 

“I wasn’t awkward,” Shiro protests. “At least I knew how to hold a baby. She didn’t,” he tells Matt. “She’d never even held one before.”

 

“Never?” Matt asks skeptically.

 

“When one is royalty, one doesn’t tend to be handed babies,” Allura says. “And I’ve never had any siblings. That was unusual by Altean standards, but my father had some… difficulty in that area. I was the only one he managed to carry to term.”

 

“Don’t you have a sister?” Matt asks Shiro. “I remember… An older sister, much older?”

 

“Half-sister,” Shiro says. “And had. Apparently she passed away about six years ago. Cervical cancer.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Matt says, subdued.

 

“We weren’t close,” Shiro says. “She was my half-sister through my father, so she was almost twenty years older than me, and she lived halfway across the country. We only met a handful of times.”

 

“Well, you’ve met Pidge,” Matt says. “That’s all the siblings I have.”

 

“I always wanted siblings,” Allura says, wistfully. “I had cousins, but they weren’t of my status, so it wasn’t the same. I hope Alric will have siblings.”

 

“Not right away,” Shiro says, alarmed, and she laughs and reclaims Alric from Matt’s lap, bopping him fondly on the nose.

 

“Not right away. You’re enough trouble for now, aren’t you?” she asks Alric. “And I suppose Xio and Maze fill that role for you for the moment.”

 

“They’re that close with him?” Matt asks.

 

“Not really,” Shiro says. “Not at all. But we all live on top of each other, so they basically live in the same household, and they’re family, even if not by blood.”

 

“Pidge told me that you guys were tight-knit, but I didn’t realize it was that much,” Matt says. “I thought you’d have some… distance, with your royal status and all.”

 

“Politics is politics, but the paladins of Voltron are my family,” Allura says firmly. “As are their spouses and their children.”

 

“What about their siblings?” Matt asks.

 

“My family’s family,” Allura says.

 

“So I’m tangentially related to royalty,” Matt says. “Ha.”

 

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Shiro tells him.

 

“Well, I suppose I could try lording it over the goats, but I doubt they’d be impressed,” Matt says. “Speaking of not impressed — I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t get any fancy food or anything, although I can’t afford anything fancy anyway, so… I hope you like tubers.”

 

“Oh, Shiro told me about the tubers,” Allura says. “We brought our own food to share, of course, as your guests. And we brought a gift. Shiro, would you —”

 

He nods and digs around in their bags until he finds the satchel of spices and hands it to Matt.

 

“I didn’t think you’d remember,” Matt says after he peers inside.

 

“Of course I remembered,” Shiro says. “Why would I forget?”

 

“I guess I’m memorable after all,” Matt says, with something in his voice that makes Shiro shiver; then Matt seems to catch himself, abruptly getting up to deposit the satchel on one of the shelves that line the long wall.

 

Allura frowns and turns to Shiro, who shrugs helplessly. He doesn’t know why Matt’s being like this, this strange push and pull; maybe it’s just how he is around people, these days.

 

“We won’t make you use any of those to feed us tonight,” Allura calls to Matt. “In fact, we don’t need to cook at all. Everything we have is already prepared, all we need to do is heat it up.”

 

“Don’t worry, she didn’t make it, Hunk did,” Shiro adds dryly.

 

“I’m not terribly talented in that arena,” Allura admits to Matt as he returns. “But I am getting better at baking, and Hunk is very patient with me.”

 

“Shiro’s decent,” Matt says. “Last time he was here, he cooked. Well, he cooked and I helped. It was nice. A change of pace, at least.”

 

“Yes, Shiro told me he enjoyed his previous visit here,” Allura says.

 

“I did,” Shiro confirms, grinning a bit, but Matt just frowns at him, looking confused.

 

“I did, too,” Matt says, finally.

 

“Well, I’m glad I’m able to meet you, too,” Allura tells him. “It’s not easy in our positions, finding time that Shiro and I can spend together — much less enough of it to journey to such an isolated star system — but we felt this was important enough to make that time, even if only for an evening.”

 

“You’re leaving tonight?” Matt asks as he gets up and starts rummaging through his kitchen shelves. “What kind of thing do you need for the food you brought? Pan, pot…?”

 

“Both,” Shiro says. “Don’t worry, I’ll do the dishes, I know the drill.”

 

“The Castle is docked at… well, we can’t say, but most of the people there don’t know we’re even gone,” Allura says. “The ones who do don’t actually expect us back until the morning, but they would hardly complain if we got back earlier.”

 

“Were you thinking of staying overnight?” Matt asks.

 

“We had considered it, but it seems a lot to ask,” Allura says. “Having just Shiro here is one thing, but all three of us is another entirely.”

 

“We take up room,” Shiro says ruefully. “And you don’t have a lot of it.”

 

“I do apologize for the timing,” Allura adds. “We know it’s not a terribly convenient time to visit, but it would be almost impossible to slip away for an entire day.”

 

Matt shrugs. “You’re not interrupting anything. It’s not like I’m entertaining a lot of guests up here, and I make my own hours. You’re welcome to stay over if you want.”

 

“We don’t want to put you out,” Allura insists. “Having an infant visit overnight is hardly a restful experience.”

 

Matt waves that aside. “It’s fine. And this way I’ll get a taste of what I’m agreeing to, right?”

 

“Alright, time to be on your best behavior,” Shiro tells Alric, who just babbles at him and waves his plate in his general direction.

 

“Who says Alric’s the one I’m worried about?” Matt asks.

 

“So what, you’re worried about me?” Shiro asks.

 

“You’re not a very restful experience either,” Matt says, grinning, and Shiro laughs.

 

“I don’t remember any complaints,” Shiro tells him.

 

“Oh, you’re trouble, there’s no question about that,” Matt says. “But I’m not complaining.”

 

“Well, I’m glad Shiro gets such a high review from you,” Allura says cheerfully, and Matt has been subtly leaning closer and closer to Shiro, an asteroid drawn into orbit around a star, but he pulls back at her words, his usual tension replacing whatever sly thing he keeps offering Shiro and then yanking away, so Shiro just sighs and gets up to pull on his coat.

 

“Where are you going?” Matt asks him, looking startled.

 

“Food’s in the cruiser,” Shiro explains. “I had Alric and Allura had the blaster, so we couldn’t bring it up with us. If I had been thinking, I would have had you two get it when you were out on your walk, but it’s fine, I’ll get it.”

 

“I’ll come with,” Matt says. “You shouldn’t be wandering around by yourself in the dark out here.”

 

“Are there were-goats?” Shiro asks dryly.

 

“No, but there are loose rocks and sudden drops,” Matt says. “It’d be pretty stupid for you to survive combat but break your neck while you’re out here for… whatever this visit is.”

 

“Vacation?” Allura suggests.

 

“If that’s what this is, you need to find a new travel agent,” Matt says.

 

“A sort of… broker,” Shiro explains for Allura. “You pay them to help you plan trips, and they’re the ones who actually call everyone and make arrangements.”

 

“Right, yeah, alien,” Matt says as he pulls on his coat and grabs a light. “Sorry.”

 

“To me, _you’re_ the alien,” Allura points out.

 

“We’ll be back soon,” Shiro says, dropping a kiss on her forehead.

 

“Don’t try to rush in the dark, darling,” Allura says. “I’ll feed Alric, that will keep me occupied.” She winces. “I hope he won’t try biting me again. I understand that teething is an unpleasant experience for him, but I do wish he didn’t feel the need to spread that unpleasantness around.”

 

“Sorry I can’t help,” Shiro says. “Regular shape-holding human here. Very useless.”

 

“A few uses,” Allura says, winking, and Shiro’s laugh carries him and Matt out through the door.

 

The sun was just hinting at setting when he and Allura arrived here, the light dim but serviceable as a wash of hazy reds and dull purples slowly mottled across the sky. Now that the sun has set, though, the night outside Matt’s cottage is so dark that at first Shiro wonders if his eyes are still even open, a darkness so total that it almost seems the world has fallen away — and then Matt switches on his light, and the world becomes the single slash of path illuminated in its beam.

 

“You really weren’t kidding about the dark out here,” Shiro tells him as they start to pick their way down to the goat field where the cruiser is parked.

 

“There’s not a lot of people out here, and this moon has plenty of fog and clouds but no industrial works,” Matt says. “Nights are… intense. But I like it. Reminds me of the desert back home.”

 

“What, around the Garrison?” Shiro asks. “I don’t remember it being like this.”

 

“No, not at the Garrison,” Matt says. “But if you went out further into the desert, out past the towns and the highways… Yes. It was.”

 

“What were you doing out in the middle of the desert?” Shiro asks him.

 

“I went camping with my mom a lot,” Matt explains. “She was as white as they come, but she worked in the Navajo Nation for almost two decades on uranium mill cleanup, so she knew a lot of the stories about the land out there.”

 

“Pidge told me that she passed away,” Shiro says. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Not that long after Pidge came here,” Matt says, so quietly that Shiro can barely hear him over the gentle night noises around them. “I guess losing your husband and your only two kids all within a few months isn’t great for your cardiac health.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says again.

 

“I’ve got Pidge,” Matt says. “They’re alive. I’m not the only Holt left. That helps. That’s why I’m still even in this galaxy. Well. Other than two decades missing from my life that I can’t explain and a massive dose of PTSD from a war that I can’t talk about.” He’s quiet for a moment, then adds: “But mostly Pidge.”

 

“You said your mom worked in uranium mill cleanup?” Shiro asks. “What does that mean?”

 

“You lived in Arizona for three years and you don’t know about the uranium?” Matt asks, disbelievingly.

 

“I didn’t know about a lot of things when we were cadets,” Shiro says. “I didn’t care enough to learn them.”

 

“Yeah, you were kind of a dick,” Matt tells him. “Not mean, just… rigid.”

 

“Little bit,” Shiro admits.

 

“They found uranium deposits in the Navajo Nation, back in the mid-1940s,” Matt explains. “A lot of Navajo worked in the mines, or lived near water that the mines contaminated. The mining companies didn’t know a lot about uranium exposure, but they knew it was dangerous, and they didn’t care enough to the people there, or regulate the mining at all — they just wanted to get it out of the ground so they could beat the Russkies, and the government went along with it. Encouraged it, even when people started dying. And now the land and the water out there is fucked up, and people are still dying, and some people still even live in houses that they built with the radioactive rocks they got from the mines where they worked, because no one bothered to tell them that those rocks would kill them.”

 

“That’s almost the worst part of it for me,” Matt adds, bitterly. “The companies, the government — they didn’t hate them, they just didn’t care. I’d rather be hated as a person than be shrugged off as a thing. I was a thing for a while. It’s not a great experience.”

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says quietly, and it’s not the same, what happened to him and what happened to Matt, Haggar’s Champion and a nameless prisoner in a labor camp, but — “Me too.”

 

Matt snorts. “New galaxy, same old shit. I don’t know why I was so surprised at what people do out here when I grew up hearing about the uranium mines every damn night and Dachau every Passover I spent with my great-aunt, but I was. I don’t think you could surprise me now, though.”

 

“I still am,” Shiro tells him. “Maybe I shouldn’t be, and I’ve gotten desensitized to a lot of it, but sometimes? I’m still surprised.”

 

“And that’s why you’re still fighting a war and I’m not,” Matt says. “Okay, little bit of a step down here, then we’re in the field.”

 

“Ah,” Shiro says. “Bugs. Great.”

 

“Be thankful I didn’t walk you into any arachnid nests,” Matt warns him as they tromp across the field, Shiro trying to not twist his ankle in any burrow holes along the way. “There’s not a whole lot around my hill, most of them are in the trees farther down the valley, but the ones I do have are _big._ ”

 

“Every time I learn something new about this moon, I like it that much less,” Shiro says sourly.

 

“It’s not so bad,” Matt says, then: “Here. Stop walking for a second, I’m going to turn the light off.”

 

“Why?” Shiro asks, alarmed.

 

“You’ll see,” Matt says, and switches off his light.

 

The darkness comes roaring back in, as hungry as before, and Shiro almost begs Matt to turn the light back in — he can’t see anything, he’s blind and helpless and open to attack from any direction, his skin starting to crawl with the skittering animal need to get somewhere safe, somewhere defensible — but Matt told him to wait, and Shiro trusts him, as strange as that might seem. And one by one, as his eyes start to adjust to the darkness, the stars begin to wink into being above him, tiny pinpricks of light breaking through the black until they fill the entire sky above him and Matt, so many and so bright that Shiro wonders how he had ever missed them.

 

“Told you,” Matt says quietly. “Not all bad.”

 

Then he laughs. “Although this wouldn’t be as impressive if it was a cloudy night. I guess you got lucky.”

 

“I guess I did,” Shiro says, softly.

 

He and Matt stay where they are for a while, shin-deep in the grass and dry brush with the heavens open and shining above their heads, but eventually Matt says, “Come on. We should get back,” and they walk together to the cruiser, unload everything he and Allura didn’t bring up before — “Baby stuff,” Shiro explains when Matt looks slightly aghast at the bulging knapsack Shiro’s trying to juggle along with the food. “We try to travel light, but we thought you wouldn’t appreciate it if we didn’t bring extra diapers” — and they head back across the field and up Matt’s hill to the distant cottage perched on top, its windows glowing gently with its lamplight even from this distance.

 

“Did you fall into a hole after all?” Allura asks when they return.

 

“Hmm?” Shiro asks, absently unpacking dinner.

 

“You were gone quite a long time,” Allura says.

 

“Oh,” Shiro says, surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t realize. It didn’t feel that long to me.”

 

“No apology necessary,” Allura says. “I just worry about you. I’m glad you’re safe.”

 

Shiro smiles. “Matt showed me the stars out here. They’re incredible.”

 

“I’d tell you to go outside now, look for yourself, but even the light bleed from my cottage is enough to make stargazing on this hill difficult, and I’d prefer not to power off my generator. It’s a bitch to get back on,” Matt tells Allura.

 

“Next time, then,” Allura says, smiling.

 

“…Yeah,” Matt says. “Sure. Next time.”

 

“Okay, I’m not entirely sure what Hunk packed for us, but it’s looking like spicy fish curry thing, not-spicy fish curry thing, fry bread, sweet root salad — but no tubers — and green not-rice,” Shiro tells them as he peers into each container. “Sorry, I guess there was a lot of fish and leftovers in the fridge and not much else. We kind of sprung this on him.”

 

“No need to be sorry, any food is good food, and I haven't had any fish in… wow, years,” Matt says. “Spicy one for me. Was this a spur of the moment thing for you guys?”

 

“Not spicy for me, darling,” Allura tells Shiro, and then to Matt: “We’d wanted to visit for a while, but we couldn't find any time to do so until a hole opened up unexpectedly in our schedules today. I'm sorry we didn't come sooner.”

 

“No need for sorry from you, either,” Matt says. “I wasn't expecting you two at all, so it's not like I was pining away or anything. You three,” he corrects, attempting a wave and a smile at Alric, although it looks more like a grimace. Alric, for his part, does not look impressed.

 

“The more nervous you are, the more he's going to pick up on it and be nervous too,” Shiro tells Matt. “Just relax. He's a baby, not a bomb.”

 

“I'm not nervous, I'm intimidated,” Matt says, staring at Alric dubiously. “I don't think he likes me. He doesn't look like he does.”

 

“Babies are terribly judgmental creatures, and I'm afraid Alric has already perfected the royal glare of disdain,” Allura says. “But he likes most people once he has the chance to know them, which is very un-royal of him. You may hold him again if you wish —”

 

“No, that's okay, I'll help Shiro with the food,” Matt says hastily, nearly jumping out of his seat to join Shiro at the bench, and Allura snorts.

 

“Alric, I do believe that adult man is scared of you,” she tells Alric, who squeals at the mention of his name. “Very intimidating. Your great-grandmother would be proud.”

 

“Was she intimidating too?” Matt asks, nudging Shiro aside to pour the curries into the warming pots.

 

“Horrifically so,” Allura tells him. “She died when I was very young, but if she'd lived longer, I believe Zarkon’s war would have lasted all of ten vargas.”

 

“Horrifically so?” Matt asks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Yes,” Allura says.

 

“Trust me, you do not want to get into the pre-Alfor Altean royal family,” Shiro mutters to him.

 

“Alfor?” Matt asks. “Your father, right?”

 

“Yes,” Allura says, gently prying Alric’s hand off one of her dangling braids. “The last king of the Altean Empire. Although you could make a case that my grandmother was the last true queen of the Altean Empire, and everything that followed was merely… a gamble, made and lost.”

 

“And you're not a true princess of the Altean Empire?” Matt asks her.

 

“Not of the Altean Empire,” Allura says. “And the title is mostly ceremonial at this point, considering that Altea is gone and my species with it.”

 

“There weren't any Alteans anywhere else in the galaxy?” Matt asks skeptically, watching the fry bread pop and sizzle in the pan. “I thought you said there was an empire.”

 

“There was,” Allura says. “It was massive — although significantly smaller than it had been under my grandmother. When planets and systems wished to gain their independence, my father let them. But any Alteans who escaped the destruction of the Altean home system were hunted down, by the Galra Imperials or simply by the locals when they realized that the Alteans didn't have the protection of an imperial machine anymore, and it seems that most of the scattered Alteans who did survive didn't interbreed with the people of their new homes, so they died off fairly quickly.”

 

“Why didn't they interbreed?” Matt asks. “I mean, okay, hybrids are usually sterile, but not always.”

 

“There are some,” Allura says, absently bouncing Alric and making him giggle. “Lotor is one. Alric is another. But my people had certain… ideas about species purity, let's say.”

 

“Oh fuck, you guys were one of those people,” Matt says with dawning realization.

 

“Not under my father,” Allura says. “At least, under him it was a matter of manners, not murder.”

 

“Whereas your grandma would have drowned Alric in the well,” Matt says, and Shiro looks up in shock, but Allura just nods.

 

“She certainly would have tried,” Allura says. “But she wouldn’t have succeeded.”

 

“Why not?” Matt asks.

 

“I would have run her through first,” Allura says.

 

Matt looks askance at Shiro, then tells her, “No offense meant, but your family sounds fucked up.”

 

“We weren't,” Allura says. “As long as you followed the rules, we loved each other very much. My grandmother adored me — would have gladly defended me to her last breath — and I adored her as well. My fondest memories from childhood were of time I spent with her and my father.”

 

“But if you didn't follow the rules?” Matt asks.

 

“There's a reason my father waited until my grandmother was dead to start enacting reforms,” Allura says.

 

“And on that depressing imperialist note, dinner,” Shiro says dryly, and Allura laughs and then confiscates Alric’s wildly waving plate after he nearly sends the dish in front of her crashing to the floor.

 

“Shiro, the Slav —” Allura says quickly, Alric looking mutinous at being deprived of his new toy, and Shiro hurriedly snags the crocheted doll from the baby knapsack and tosses it to her before Alric starts to wail.

 

“The Slav?” Matt asks as he dumps an assortment of cutlery onto the table.

 

“Not that kind of Slav,” Shiro tells him, and then to Allura: “It's also an Earth ethnicity.”

 

“How interesting,” Allura says. “No, this Slav is a doll of a person we know. Shiro commissioned it from Lance. He seems to find it amusing, although I couldn't tell you why.”

 

“He's a pain in the ass, and it's a small revenge to watch Alric chew on him,” Shiro says.

 

“He's not that awful. He has an affliction of the mind that Shiro finds particularly difficult to deal with,” Allura tells Matt. “My partner may pretend to be a patient man, but he's a terrible fraud,” she adds, teasingly.

 

“Oh, agreed,” Matt says. “And he has a temper, too, for as long as I’ve known him.”

 

“Do you have young Shiro stories?” Allura asks delightedly. “Please, share.”

 

“Please don’t. Here, I'll take Alric and the Slav, you eat, then swap,” Shiro tells Allura, who nods and passes a wriggling Alric to him along with the slightly sodden Slav doll.

 

“You guys are pretty good at this parent thing,” Matt observes. “At least, you have the rhythm down.”

 

“We don't get much time to spend with him these days, so what time we do have, we try to make it count,” Allura says, gratefully shoveling the not-spicy curry into her bowl.

 

“We're not sure if he'll remember any of this when he gets older, but if he does, we want him to remember that we were here,” Shiro says, smoothing a hand over Alric’s soft cloud of white hair. “No matter what happens, we want him to remember that we loved him.”

 

“Well, I can tell, and I've only been around you guys for an evening, so I'm sure he knows already,” Matt says. “And even if he doesn't consciously remember, it'll matter. He'll feel it. It changes their brains.”

 

“It does?” Shiro asks, surprised.

 

“Yeah,” Matt says. “With human babies, but also Earth mammal babies, so I'd bet Altean babies are the same. Babies who're loved and handled and taken care of have… well, a lot of complicated neurological and endocrine terminology, but essentially lower chemical stress response, which has all sorts of good implications for overall health and wellbeing. It's not a guarantee, neuroplasticity is a thing, but it's a tendency. I guess their bodies remember, even if their minds don't.”

 

“That's… really comforting, actually,” Shiro says.

 

“Bodies remember all sorts of things,” Matt says. “I've always been more interested in math and machines more than organic matter, but I thought about bucking the family trend, going into neuroscience instead. But I didn't.”

 

“Why not?” Shiro asks.

 

Matt looks at him and smiles, tinged with sadness and something Shiro couldn't even begin to name.

 

“I wanted to go to outer space,” Matt says. “And I had the degrees, but I was still so young, so I wasn't supposed to for at least another decade, but I fought my way up the ladder and made it onto the Kerberos mission roster anyway. I think my dad may have pulled a few strings, I'm not sure. But we were the same cadet class, you were barely older than I was. That mission was full of people who never should have been there. Why'd you do it?”

 

“Go after a command at that age?” Shiro asks, and Matt nods. “To succeed, I think. I wanted to be respectable.” He snorts. “My mom wanted me to be respectable. I guess to make up for the fact that I happened in the first place.”

 

“There was some shit that happened with your parents, right?” Matt asks. “You never said what it was exactly, but you dropped hints. Were they separated?”

 

Shiro shakes his head. “Never married in the first place,” he says. “Never even together, not really. I guess a secretary having an affair with her married boss is a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.”

 

“So why’re you doing it now?” Matt asks, and Shiro grins.

 

“Well, I don't know if you've heard, but I'm one of the defenders of the galaxy,” he says.

 

“Very respectable,” Matt says, mouth quirked.

 

“That's not why,” Shiro says. “I'm pretty done with respectable these days.”

 

“You look pretty respectable from where I’m sitting,” Matt says, nodding at Alric. “Defender of the galaxy, married into royalty, and now you’re a father.”

 

“We’re not married,” Shiro says as Allura makes a face of distaste. “And I don’t love him because he’s a symbol of anything, or because of what he makes me. I love him because he’s my son.”

 

Matt half-smiles and leans forward to address Alric, who’s busy waving around the Slav. “I bet you know this already, Alric, but you are one lucky kid.”

 

Alric considers him solemnly for a second, then drops the Slav on the floor and laughs uproariously as Shiro reaches down to pick it up.

 

“One of his favorite games,” Shiro tells Matt, long-suffering. “Drop things and make adults pick them up.”

 

Alric shrieks happily when Shiro hands him the Slav, and then promptly drops it on the floor again. Shiro sighs and reaches down.

 

“He seems to have you trained pretty well,” Matt observes. “Well done, Alric.”

 

“You can have this back, but I’m holding onto it too this time,” Shiro informs Alric as he hands him the Slav. Alric tries to drop it again, but it only flops forward in Shiro’s hand, dangling from one crocheted leg, and he considers it with an expression of distaste before grumpily stuffing it back into his mouth.

 

“Congratulations on outsmarting a baby,” Matt tells Shiro.

 

“In this company, I’ll take what I can get,” Shiro says.

 

Matt rolls his eyes. “You’re not stupid. IQ is a bad measure of intelligence. You’ve lasted this long as the Black Paladin, and according to what I’ve heard, the only other one to survive as long as you have was Zarkon. You’re brilliant too, in your own way.”

 

Shiro shrugs, and Matt points his fork at him and says, “No, stop getting self-deprecating modesty on my table, I don’t want to clean that up. It stains.”

 

“I'm not —” Shiro protests, but Matt shoots him a look, and he relents. “I'll try not to.”

 

“Good, because it's not a good look on you,” Matt informs him.

 

“And what is?” Shiro asks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Being proud of everything you've managed to accomplish,” Matt tells him, with that same strange, sad half-smile. “Being proud of yourself. That's a good look.”

 

“I know that you two slept together,” Allura says abruptly.

 

Matt freezes with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Sorry?”

 

“You and Shiro,” Allura explains. “I know it’s hardly typical dinner conversation, but there seems to be some confusion and I wanted to make things very clear as to where we stand. He told me, I know, and I’m not upset at all. On the contrary, I’m happy you two enjoyed your time together, and I hope you continue to enjoy each other’s company, whatever form that may take, so please don't feel the need to keep up any sort of pretense in my presence.”

 

“That’s a different line than most of the spouses of people I’ve slept with,” Matt says after a moment.

 

“Clearly you’ve been sleeping with the wrong people,” Allura says.

 

“Is _that_ what’s been making you so weird tonight? I told you she was okay with it,” Shiro says, confused.

 

“Yeah, but most people say what you said,” Matt says. “But, well — you’re you. I should have known you were actually telling the truth.”

 

“If you thought I was lying, why didn’t you say something?” Shiro asks.

 

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” Matt says quietly, not looking at either one of them. “And I thought, if I could have you even once — it’d be worth it.”

 

“Well, now you know,” Allura says smoothly, and Matt smiles at her, almost tentative.

 

“Now I know,” he agrees.

 

“So,” Allura says brightly. “Tell me more about your work here! I don’t have any engineering training, but I’ve spent enough time around Pidge and Hunk to probably understand some of it if you use small words.”

 

“No big words necessary,” Matt says. “Everything I do here is pretty boring. It's just repair work — patching things up, replacing parts, sometimes just cleaning out whatever mud or rocks got into it.”

 

“Then tell us about your work before,” Allura suggests.

 

“My work before?” Matt echoes, frowning. “What, when I was with the rebels? I monitored Galra transmissions and then I just built bombs. It wasn't that interesting either.”

 

“Shiro tells me that you were a scientist before that,” Allura says. “Did you have a particular area of research?”

 

Matt blinks owlishly. “...Astrophysics,” he says, finally. “I had dual degrees — computer science and astrophysics — but the computer science was mostly for fun. I was an astrophysicist. I was studying third gravitational wave detection on the— on the Kerberos mission.”

 

“And why does one study third gravitational wave detection?” Allura asks. “I'm afraid my schooling addressed physics about as well as it did animal husbandry, although I have educated myself somewhat since.”

 

“Well, gravitational waves don’t sound important, but other than being really cool on their own, they can help us find black holes and neutron star mergers, and those can tell us about the nature of gravity itself,” Matt says. “Could tell us? I haven't exactly kept up to date on scientific research in this galaxy. I don't even know if there is scientific research in this galaxy, at least not what I worked on.”

 

“I can't speak to gravitational waves, but there are a number of prestigious scientific institutions in this galaxy, in occupied and independent territory both,” Allura says. “The war has displaced many, but they are starting to rebuild, and some never stopped. The university at Quuduzh is one of the oldest in the galaxy, and I don't believe they ever stopped teaching, even as bombs were dropping on the city around them.”

 

Matt smiles a bit to himself. “Leningrad.”

 

“Pardon?” Allura asks.

 

“There was a city on Earth that came under an extended wartime siege about fifty years before Shiro and I were born,” Matt explains. “A place called Leningrad. The siege lasted for four years — no food, no relief from the outside — and the whole city starved. People dying in the streets, eating sawdust, even cannibalism.”

 

“I remember learning about that,” Shiro says. “From a military history perspective, at least.”

 

“The siege was horrific, but that's not why it's famous,” Matt tells Allura. “There was a research institute of plant genetics there. They had the largest seed bank in the world, and they managed to get most of it into the city before the siege begun; hid it to keep it safe. You hear seeds, you think something little, but a lot of them were tubers — real food, in a city where they were eating sawdust and their own dead. And some of the botanists protecting it starved to death rather than eat any of the seeds.”

 

“And did they succeed?” Allura asks.

 

“They did,” Matt says. “The bank survived the siege. When we left it was still the largest one on Earth.”

 

“Leningrad was famous for a lot of other reasons too,” Shiro reminds him, and Matt shrugs.

 

“Maybe, but that was the version that I was taught,” he says. “I was a scientist, not a soldier, and Leningrad wasn't about battles or strategy or even who won or lost, really. It was about… realizing how small we were as individuals, and how being a scientist meant never compromising your principles, even if it cost you your life. Science as the greater good. I'm not saying that's how it was, but that's how it was supposed to be.”

 

“That doesn't sound that different from what I learned in my classes,” Shiro says quietly. Allura nods.

 

“The difference is that science doesn't have winners or losers,” Matt says. “The things we learn, they belong to everyone.”

 

“I think Maze might disagree with the first part,” Shiro says.

 

“The one Pidge stole from the druidic labs?” Matt asks.

 

“The labs were pretty on fire at the time, so saved might be a better word,” Shiro says. “Her pen was locked and the druids had just left her behind. I think they may have been trying to get rid of evidence.”

 

Matt scoffs disbelievingly. “And you say she's thriving.”

 

“She's a delightful child,” Allura says firmly. “And she’s introduced me to a wonderful series of books about a boy named Harry Potter. Her observations of Dumbledore’s moral complexities are quite astute for her age.”

 

“But that's the point of Leningrad,” Matt argues. “Sacrificing yourself to save seeds or teach students or whatever? That's noble. Sacrificing someone else? That's murder.”

 

“In war and peacetime politics both, sacrificing others is inevitable,” Allura says quietly. “I imagine that to a degree, science is the same way.”

 

“Not the kind that I did,” Matt says. “Nobody got hurt by the kind of science I did.”

 

“And what kind did you do?” Allura asks, and Matt grins.

 

“I listened to the universe talk,” he says.

 

Allura raises an eyebrow. “Did the universe have much to say?”

 

“Did it ever,” Matt says. “The way we experience the world — well, the way humans experience the world, but I’m guessing Alteans do, too — we think that, uh, this table and I are two separate things,” he says, slapping at the wood. “But if you go down to the subatomic level, there's this exchange of matter and energy always happening between everything in the universe. It's like a… negotiation, all the time, not just between my hand and the table but with my clothes, with the air, with my own body.”

 

“So what you're saying is that you’re like a table,” Allura says dryly, but Matt just nods excitedly.

 

“You are too,” he says. “And Shiro, and Alric, and Lotor, and that pan — at the subatomic level, we're all made of the same materials, held together by these forces that we still don't really understand. For a long time, physics was about breaking things down into separate static pieces that we could understand, but the field shifted because we realized that the world isn’t static at all. Our tiniest component parts are always acting in relation to each other, always dynamic. At the end of the day, we're all just conversations that the universe is having with itself.”

 

“And you got to listen in,” Shiro says.

 

“And I got to listen in,” Matt agrees, happily. “I was on a team working in collaboration with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. We were going to try to place an experimental detector component out in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt to gather data from a gravitational environment different from Earth’s to see if we could compare that with our existing data to improve the sensitivity of the two original LIGO detectors, although my area of study was really the graviton — well, area of study, we don’t even know if it _exists_ yet but it’s theorized and the math checks out…”

 

The last time Shiro took a physics class was at fifteen, so he’s well and thoroughly lost within the first few minutes of Matt’s explanation — but the weariness that clings to Matt like a callus sloughs off as he talks, and he's bright and energetic, not a stranger to Shiro at all, this man who's somehow still so full of wonder at the world. Shiro would be happy to just listen to him talk, even if he didn't understand a word of it, but something in his expression must clue Matt in, because Matt pauses in his running monologue to say, “You're not getting any of this at all, are you?”

 

“Not a lot,” Shiro admits.

 

“I believe our galaxy may use a different scientific language than yours,” Allura adds. “So I'm probably getting even less. But it's still quite pleasant to listen to,” she assures him.

 

Shiro’s used to dealing with scientists, so he expects Matt to just shrug them off as lost causes and change the topic, but Matt just squints at them consideringly.

 

“Introductory Earth physics for two very smart but scientifically illiterate adults,” he says, as much to himself as to them. “Okay. I can do that, if you want.”

 

“I wouldn't call myself entirely scientifically illiterate,” Allura protests, annoyed.

 

“Oh, you're literate, just not in my science,” Matt tells her. “I was referring to Shiro.”

 

“I should say something to save face, but you're probably right,” Shiro says, and Allura laughs.

 

“We weren’t on the same track at the Garrison, but we did have some guest lectures that the whole class attended,” Matt confides to Allura. “He slept through every single science-related one. But very politely and discreetly.”

 

“Like you listened to any of the military historians better,” Shiro tells Matt. “And you didn’t even pretend to be polite or discreet. You just put in your earbuds  and pulled out all fifty of those notebooks you carried around all the time, right in the front row.”

 

Matt shrugs. “Writing on paper helps me think, and nobody was expecting me to get anything out of those lectures anyway. Who’d look at me and think ‘command material’?”

 

“I could,” Shiro says, and Matt looks at him disbelievingly.

 

“If that’s the case, then you _really_ need to get those glasses,” Matt tells him.

 

“I’ve found that appearances say very little about a person’s ability to lead,” Allura comments. “Or their ability to command.”

 

“Are those different things?” Matt enquires.

 

“Leadership requires collaboration,” Allura says. “Command requires collaboration as well, but of a different sort. A collaboration to not collaborate, as it were.”

 

Matt hmms thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put like that.”

 

“It’s too bad you don’t give lectures,” Shiro tells Allura. “No one would ever sleep through those. Half the stuff you know is self-taught, and you’re still more insightful than any professor I’ve ever had.”

 

“A princess, a general, a pilot, a parent, and a deep thinker,” Matt says. “You’re really going for those merit badges.”

 

“Accolades,” Shiro murmurs to her. “Well, sort of,” and doesn’t add ‘for children’.

 

“I try,” Allura says. “I don’t like not knowing things, and I fill in the gaps in my education as best I can. Will you tell us more about your Earth physics, then?”

 

“Will you fall asleep if I do?” Matt asks Shiro wryly.

 

“If I do, it’s only because I spent most of last night slogging through reports instead of sleeping,” Shiro says honestly. “But I like listening to you talk about this. I don’t understand most of what you’re saying and you still make it sound interesting. Maybe I’m a little old for introductory anything, but it’s not too late to learn at least something, right?”

 

“It’s never too late to learn,” Matt says. “We’re always learning and changing, that’s neuroplasticity, that’s what it means to be _alive._ ”

 

“See?” Shiro says. “Neuroplasticity. No idea what that means. But now I want to know.”

 

“The brain’s ability to react to environmental change or compensate for physical trauma by reorganizing itself through the formation of new neural connections,” Matt says promptly. “Anything anyone says about your neural pathways being frozen after age whatever is bullshit, our brains keep changing until we die. Sorry, did you want neuroscience 101 or physics 101?”

 

“Physics first,” Allura says.

 

“First,” Matt says. “Ambitious. I like it. Okay, I guess we can start with gravity and see how it goes. Just be patient with me.”

 

“If you’ll be patient with us,” Allura says. “And Alric. Here, Shiro, I’ll take him so you can eat.”

 

Matt waves that aside. “He's a baby. What am I going to do, get offended that he's not interested in the laws of thermodynamics? As long as I'm not the one who has to calm him down,” he adds hurriedly.

 

“We'll spare you that terrible fate,” Shiro says dryly. “For now.”

 

“Threatened with a baby, that's a new one,” Matt says. “Okay. Gravity...”

 

No one would sleep through Matt’s lectures either, Shiro thinks as he listens to Matt talk them through the universe. Admittedly, they're not particularly clear or accessible — Matt’s clearly spent too long living in places where everyone else didn’t know anything about this or just didn’t care, places where the only person he could talk to about this was himself, because his explanations are stumbling things, jumping straight from point A to point Q and then awkwardly backtracking when he sees the utter confusion on Shiro’s face or Allura’s frown — but there’s an energy to him that draws Shiro in nonetheless, that bright delight that makes Shiro want to know these things that he doesn’t know, to follow where Matt leads him, down into the protons and neutrons and the space between all things.

 

Matt doesn’t let him get away with feigning understanding, either. Matt knows his tricks, because apparently they haven’t changed much since they were cadets, since Shiro was so briefly and disastrously Matt’s commander, and Matt asks questions, quizzes Allura on the scientific language she learned even as he translates it and then breaks it down further for Shiro. Shiro’s always done better with visual prompts but he’s learned how to make do, trained his mind to sketch out diagrams on walls and woodgrain instead of paper — but when Matt notices him absently tracing out the structure of an atom on the table, Matt unearths a sketchpad from beneath the precarious piles of tools and parts strewn across his workbench and scribbles down shapes and equations with one hand as he talks with the other, gesticulating and at one point nearly knocking off his own glasses.

 

Halfway through, Matt switches hands, his left just as steady on the paper as the right, and explains when he sees Shiro looking: “Ambidextrous. I wasn’t born that way, but I got bored one summer and started training myself. I guess that’s what happens to Holts when they’re only taking four summer seminars, not five.”

 

“Don’t listen to him, seminars are nothing to be laughed at,” Shiro tells Allura. “I took three my last year at the Garrison and I nearly ended up in the hospital from exhaustion.”

 

“My brain is inconveniently fast,” Matt says. “And I never would have guessed that you were that bad off, you always looked so… virile.”

 

“Concealer,” Shiro admits. “And a lot of Red Bull.”

 

Matt makes a disgusted face. “The grossest stimulant in the universe,” he informs Allura. “And I’ve taken a lot of them over the years, so I should know.”

 

“If four seminars is your idea of free time, then, I shudder to think what you would do completely at loose ends,” Allura remarks.

 

“Repair improvised wind turbines, feud with goats, and drink an unhealthy amount of shitty tuber-derived moonshine from the still out back,” Matt says. “And occasionally play host to top rebel leaders, I guess. And you,” he adds to Alric. “Do you count as a top rebel leader?”

 

“I certainly hope not,” Allura says as Alric stares at Matt suspiciously. “His grasp of military strategy and interethnic planetary politics is somewhat lacking at the moment.”

 

“Are you having problems with interethnic planetary politics?” Matt asks, smiling tentatively at Alric.

 

Allura scowls. “Shiro’s chief struggle continues to be cereal grains; mine continues to be ensuing cooperation between people whose great-great-great-great-grandmothers threw rocks at each other one time and started a centuries-long blood feud. I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not.”

 

“Hey, he smiled at me!” Matt says as Alric curls his mouth in a slightly less distasteful expression and then goes back to gumming on the Slav.

 

“Indeed,” Allura says, fondly, and Matt pushes his glasses back up onto his nose and goes back to his tangent about dark matter. They’re going to come away from tonight with quite an education, Shiro suspects, if not a particularly cohesive one — at one point Matt even segues into a short story he read about dark matter and alternate universes — but it’s a good feeling, a needed feeling, a pause for breath. It’s so nice to learn something just for the sake of learning it, with no true need, no stakes attached, no lives depending on how well Shiro can master it in a week or even a single afternoon. Shiro hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d even tried.

 

Allura seems to be having fun too. She’s no technical genius, not by the standards of the people they live with, but she has a voracious thirst for education nonetheless, grabs knowledge up handful by greedy handful from anyone willing to share it. Never content to stagnate, she drags Shiro up from the mud along with her, and he likes to think that he gives her some measure of ballast in return, a safe harbor to shelter in, a respite from the endless polite knife-thrusts of her political position.

 

But Matt eggs her on where Shiro would gently hold her back, and at some point, Shiro looks over to Allura to find her watching Matt with something considering in her gaze, something more than the judgment of a mother assessing a guardian for her child or a leader assessing a potential ally, and Shiro… wonders.

 

He still doesn’t know Matt very well, and Allura knows Matt even less, but for all Shiro’s talk of safety, they’re not cautious people, he and Allura. Strategists, yes, and hardly foolhardy — but not cautious. They would never be able to live as they do if they were cautious. They would never have survived.

 

There’s barely a hint of moonlight ghosting amidst the black at the windows when Matt puts down his sketchbook, stretching out in one long sinuous movement that has Shiro smile with memory and Allura grin at his smile.

 

“It is getting rather late,” Allura says. “We didn’t mean to keep you up. And we’ll all pay for it if Alric doesn’t get his rest.”

 

“I guess I lost track of time,” Matt says. He laughs delightedly. “I haven’t talked about any of this in… years. Decades. I’m surprised I even remember it all.”

 

“I’m not,” Shiro says. “People remember things they cared about.”

 

“I still care,” Matt says, sounding surprised. “Maybe it’s stupid to care about gravitational waves during a war, but I do.”

 

“The world needs scientists as much as it needs soldiers,” Allura says. “Even during war, life must go on. Wind turbines must be repaired, children must be cared for, stories must be written, students must be taught, and every one is as noble a calling as another.”

 

“I wouldn’t expect to hear that from a war leader,” Matt says. “The soldiers I’ve met aren’t particularly keen on people who refuse to fight. I wasn’t when I was a soldier.”

 

“I chose my path, and I believe it is a just one, but I’m not arrogant enough to think that it’s the only one,” Allura says.

 

“I thought Altean royalty were born, not elected,” Matt says, frowning.

 

“I was,” Allura says. “I didn’t have many choices growing up, but I made those that I had, and even more now that I’m an adult. I choose to be myself every day.”

 

“I guess I did too,” Matt says, his earlier bright enthusiasm fading. “And for all my principles, I hurt people anyway. Most of them were Galra, sure, but some of them were just scared locals trying to survive an occupation, people who thought that giving us up would keep them safe. Not very noble at all.”

 

“War rarely is,” Allura says quietly.

 

“And that’s why I’m done with it,” Matt says. “Noble or not. I’ll start cleaning up.”

 

He grabs up their dishes, dumping them into the sink after carefully scraping every piece and drop of food left on Allura’s plate into the containers the food traveled in; his own plate is already practically wiped clean. Hunk’s food is delicious as ever, but Shiro races through his portion that he left to grow cold during Matt’s impromptu night class, barely tasting any of it, so that he can join Matt at the sink.

 

“You should have taken your time,” Matt tells him, not looking up from his work.

 

“I get to eat Hunk’s food all the time,” Shiro says, and then gestures to the dishes. “Besides, I thought this was my job.”

 

“Pretty shitty for a host to make his guest do the dishes,” Matt says.

 

“I thought you didn’t care about being a good host,” Shiro says.

 

Matt shrugs.

 

“Well, I want to help,” Shiro says. “So hand me that sponge.”

 

They work quietly for a few minutes, the sounds of clinking dishware staccato against Alric’s sleepy babbling and Allura’s warm dialogue back, too quiet for Shiro to hear.

 

“I’m sorry if we said something that upset you,” Shiro tells him, voice pitched low just for Matt to hear.

 

“It wasn’t you,” Matt says, equally quietly. “It’s just…” He sighs. “I’m not a good person, Shiro. I’ve done some really ugly things, and maybe they were because I thought they were in a good cause, but I still did them. I don’t know why anyone would trust me with a sourdough starter, let alone their children.”

 

“Because you were doing those things for a good cause,” Shiro tells him. “That’s why. Because you were trying to do good. We’ve all done ugly things. The retreat from the Mnenmite System was just… a disaster. We left soldiers behind, civilians — our own allies, who’d welcomed us into their homes, whose kids had played with Xio and Maze — and we knew all of them would be killed, even the kids, but we left them behind anyway, because if we had stayed we would have been killed too. As it was, Pidge barely made it out in time. At the end of the day? We think the world is better off with us in it, because we’re trying to make it better, so we do what we have to in order to stay here. Not so different from what you did.”

 

Shiro gently knocks shoulders with Matt. “And I think the world is better with you in it too. I’m glad you did what you had to in order to stay.”

 

“Wow, you really have gotten less uptight,” Matt says. “Are you this touchy-feely with all your potential assets?”

 

“Just you,” Shiro says honestly.

 

“Matt, do you think I might trouble you for a box, or perhaps a drawer?” Allura calls softly. “I think Alric’s ready to sleep, and we didn’t spend plan on spending the night here, so we didn’t bring any sort of thing for him to sleep in.”

 

“Yeah, I think I have a box around here somewhere, and I definitely have extra bedding, I hoard that stuff,” Matt says, leaving Shiro to rummage around in the shelves underneath his workbench and eventually venture outside, returning pink-cheeked with cold but slightly dirty crate in hand.

 

“That will work perfectly, thank you,” Allura says, and she and Shiro manage to get Alric nestled into the spare quilt Matt gives them and into the crate without fully waking him up.

 

She tucks the crate on the other side of Matt’s rickety night table, and Shiro crouches down to say goodnight, watching Alric’s white eyelashes flutter against his brown cheeks as he dreams whatever babies dream of.

 

“I love you,” Shiro whispers to his son. “No matter what. I’ll always love you.”

 

“Has this week been that rough for you guys?” Matt mutters to Allura, but she shakes her head.

 

“Shiro tells him that every night we have with him,” she says.

 

Shiro straightens with a wince, sore from a long week of an even longer year, and Matt sighs and says, “Bed?”

 

They all fumble their way sleepily through their own bedtime preparations. Matt brushes his teeth at night, Allura brushes her teeth in the morning but busies herself with wrapping up her hair for sleep — “I thought you weren’t planning on staying overnight,” Matt says, watching her pull a scarf out of one of the many pockets of Alric’s baby bag; “I’ve learned from experience to simply carry one on me,” Allura says. “I’ve ended up sleeping in some unexpected places, and fighting a war is easier without having to deal with a mess of dry frizz the next morning” — while Shiro mostly tries not to drop anything as he listens to them talk, hit with a sudden exhaustion as heavy as a hammer blow. Maybe he’ll be able to fall asleep tonight, he thinks. His body knows Matt, his mind is so tired; maybe that will count for something.

 

“Well, this is… cramped,” Matt says when they all finally squish themselves into Matt’s bed, Shiro in the middle with both of them pressed up tight against him. “And awkward. Probably not the best accommodations you’ve ever stayed in.”

 

“Hardly the worst,” Allura says. “It’s warm, and dry, and I won’t feel the need for a decontamination shower the moment I leave it. And the company is far more pleasant than most.”

 

“Yeah, Shiro does make a good space heater,” Matt agrees. “Leave the little lamp on, will you?”

 

“I don’t actually _need_ it to fall asleep,” Shiro feels the need to point out. “I’m tired enough tonight that I’ll probably drop off anyway.”

 

“Bah, need,” Matt says sleepily. “You haven’t shrunk any since last time, so you’re still big enough to protect me from your nightlight. Fuck off to sleep, both of you. You’ve got important things to do in the morning.”

 

*

 

In the dream, he’s back in the cages. He’s always back in the cages. For some reason, he doesn’t dream about the arena; maybe because that at least seemed fair. There’s nothing fair about the cages.

 

In the dream, as in his memories, he knows that he’s going to die here, in this place that smells of blood and excrement and reeking antiseptic. He just doesn’t know whether they’ll make him kill someone else here first. There are so many things here he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know where he is, or who these creatures who captured them are, or who any of the other creatures in these cages are. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. He doesn’t know where any of the other members of the Kerberos mission are, any of the people that he was charged to protect — except Matt. Matt is here with him.

 

It seems so strange. Matt’s young and healthy, but he’s a scientist, not a fighter, even after the mandatory unarmed combat courses at the Garrison. Shiro’s seen him fight, and he’s _awful_. Matt sees such beautiful shining things in his mind, and his hands know how to bring those to life, but he can barely throw a punch, and he’s built so light that a strong wind could knock him over. Even if he weren’t, he can’t see four feet in front of him without his glasses. Shiro can’t see whatever these aliens saw in him, until he overhears one of the guards talking about bait.

 

He tries asking one of the other captives here, after that, one of those who hadn’t sunk into catatonia or wild-eyed muttering fear, and it just looks at him and laughs.

 

“You think the Galra want fair fights?” it asks him bitterly, then turns to Matt. “You died when they caught you. You just haven’t hit the ground yet,” and in the harsh glare of the lights above their cages, Matt’s face is sickly white with fear.

 

After that, Shiro starts paying more attention to their captors, dragging himself piece by screaming piece out of the despair that he’s fallen into and forcing himself to be here and now, even though that means that he sees everything, smells everything, feels everything that he does and that’s done to him. He can’t check out like he’d been doing before, because Matt needs him. Matt is going to die if they throw him into that arena, and they haven’t come for Matt yet, but they will.

 

Shiro couldn’t save any of the others — but he can save this one. He will save this one.

 

Their captors may not want fair fights, but Shiro starts to notice a pattern to the ones that they take. They’re strong, or they’re weak, but the ones that come into the cages visibly injured, those their captors leave alone until they’ve healed. One particularly tough-looking new captive gets thrown in with what looks like a crushed pincer, and their captors’ eyes barely flicker over them the next time they come to choose.

 

He tells Matt, who thinks for a long moment then nods.

 

“They don’t want fair, but it sounds like maybe they want a spectacle,” Matt says. “Or a competition, or… something. It’s not any of those things if one of the fighters can’t even fight.”

 

“Then we buy time until we can figure out how to get out of here,” Shiro says, even though he already knows there’s only one way that he’s getting out of this place. He can find another way for Matt. He will. “We make you look as banged-up as we can. We make you look like a bad fight.”

 

“Okay,” Matt whispers, clearly terrified — but this is better, Shiro thinks, it’s better than the alternative, and he’d do it even if Matt said no, even if he had to wrestle Matt down, because he has to. He has to.

 

They start that night, in between guard rotations. Some of the other prisoners look interested as Matt gets into position, shirt off so Shiro can better see what he’s doing, but Shiro glares them away, and they’ve seen what he’s done to protect himself and Matt before; they flinch back and leave Matt alone.

 

“This is going to hurt,” Shiro warns him. “Stay quiet. If they think you just got hurt in the scrum at feeding time, they won’t stop us.”

 

Matt nods, and Shiro forces himself to breathe, forces himself to be present so he judge how much damage he’s doing and stop before he does too much, and then he hits Matt, and then again, and again, and again; but their captors come again and look at Matt with no less consideration, even with the bruises staining most of his torso, so the next night they break two of his fingers, and the next night another, and the next night Shiro manages to scratch him hard enough to leave behind bloody welts, using his own fingernails because their captors are too smart to leave anything sharp in their cage.

 

It doesn’t help. Matt can’t tell, Matt can’t see them, but Shiro watches their captors every day, watches them watch Matt, and Shiro knows that whatever luck they’ve managed to grab onto, whatever safety Matt’s had so far, it’s about to run out. He still doesn’t know what their captors want him and Matt for — but he does know that whatever it is, it’s going to be soon.

 

“We’re going to have to do something worse,” Shiro says the next night, because he has to, he has to, and in the dream, in his memories, everything beyond the two of them falls away, but Matt’s there, crystal clear, and Shiro’s there because he has to be, he has to be, and he grabs Matt’s arm even as Matt is struggling against his grip, saying, “Wait, no, stop, I don’t — maybe I could, last time —” and Shiro can see every freckle on Matt’s face as he breaks Matt’s wrist with a stomach-roiling crunch, and Matt screams —

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for mentions of violence against children, abuse against children, famine, and a scene of semi-explicit graphic violence.


	3. Second (Part Two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the end notes.

— and Shiro screams, too, desperately trying to claw his way out of whatever they’ve strapped him down with this time, because he has to be able to fight, he has to be able to hurt, if he can’t do that he can’t protect anyone, and he has to protect Matt, and Matt is — Matt is —

 

Staring at him, terrified and shaking, pressed up as tightly as he can be against the headboard with a violent Shiro blocking his only path to escape, and Alric’s wailing, and Allura barely managed to fling herself out of the way in time to avoid getting hit, and that’s when Shiro realizes what he’s done and nearly flings himself out of bed too, scrambling off the bed and away from Matt so quickly that he trips over himself and slams against the wall painfully, cracking the back of his head against the stone as he lands in an ungraceful heap on the floor. 

 

“Matt?” Allura tries, but he’s not answering her, stuck in whatever particular hell he’s been thrown back into, although Shiro can have a pretty good guess which one that is given how Matt’s looking at him. Matt doesn’t come out of it, and she has to get up to comfort a frightened Alric — she can’t help two people at once, her son will always come first — and Shiro just stays where he ended up, pressed against the stone with his knees up to his chest, because he’s not safe to handle Alric right now and he’s not safe for Matt ever and he can’t seem to stop hurting the people he cares for, no matter how hard he tries.

 

It takes Allura a good ten minutes minutes to calm Alric from screams to snuffles, and even longer for Matt to come back, because every time Shiro moves even just a little bit sends Matt spiraling further down. Shiro locks all his muscles and tries to make himself as small as possible, even though every single damn alarm bell he has in his body is ringing, a cacophony of adrenaline so loud that Shiro can barely think, and eventually Matt seems to rouse himself, blinking furiously, and croaks out, “Oh fuck, what happened?”

 

“Shiro had a bad nightmare and came out of it fighting with… well, the bedclothes and me, mostly, but it must have badly upset you, because you went away for a while,” Allura says. “And Alric is quite cross that we disturbed his slumber.”

 

“Why’re you on the floor?” Matt asks Shiro, who darts a glance to Allura, silently begging her to be his voice until he knows that he won’t set Matt off again.

 

“He ended up there, and you seemed to be worse if he moved, so he stayed there,” she explains.

 

“How long was I out?” Matt asks.

 

“A while,” she says quietly. “I wasn’t keeping track.”

 

“Well, at least I wasn’t holding something sharp this time,” Matt says bitterly. “Shiro, come on, get up,” but when Shiro starts to push himself up, Matt flinches back hard, so Shiro just sits back down, willing himself to be as steady as the stones behind him as the minutes tick on and the bells in his head keep pounding out their warning.

 

“At least talk to me,” Matt says suddenly, and he sounds frightened. “Shiro, please, tell me you’re still there.”

 

“I’m still here,” Shiro whispers, surprised at Matt’s request. He hadn’t thought — “I’m here.”

 

“That’s something, I guess,” Matt says. “Fuck. Sorry for this,” he tells Allura, then Alric. “Sorry.”

 

“There’s no need to be sorry,” Allura says. “There are some things we can’t help.” 

 

“Yeah, well, I wish this wasn’t one of them,” Matt says. “Shiro, come on, off the floor.”

 

“I don’t think I should,” Shiro says quietly. “I don’t think I’m very good for you to be around right now.”

 

“Fuck that,” Matt says. “You’re not a danger to me anymore, my brain needs to get with the picture and move the fuck on.”

 

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Shiro says. “If it was, I wouldn’t be like this either.”

 

“Yeah, well, it should,” Matt says.

 

“It’s okay —” Shiro tries.

 

“No it fucking isn’t,” Matt snarls. “It’s fucked up, it’s not okay, I don’t want to be this way, and you don’t deserve to have this on you. You didn’t deserve any of it and you definitely don’t deserve this.”

 

But I do, Shiro thinks, I did and I do. 

 

“I’m not going to make you feel unsafe in your own home,” he says instead, firmly even as he feels anything but. “Whatever’s necessary. I’ll sleep on the floor, or in the cruiser —”

 

“No, I’m not making you sleep on the damn floor, and it’s cold as fuck out there and you shouldn’t just be wandering around in the dark,” Matt says. “Anyway, you’re upset too, you’re just hiding it better.”

 

“Let me worry about me,” Shiro says. “Just tell me what you need.”

 

“I need you to stop hurting yourself for me,” Matt snaps, and to that Shiro has no reply.

 

“Well, this is… quite awkward,” Allura says after a long moment of silence.

 

“Sorry —” Shiro starts, but she cuts him off.

 

“Don’t apologize what you can’t control,” she says firmly. “It’s not your fault either.”

 

It is, Shiro thinks, but he knows better than to get into that argument with her again, especially here of all places, with Matt still shaking and Alric hiccuping in the way that threatens to turn back into wailing should the slightest thing set him off, so he just drops his head to rest against his forearms, trying to think of something he can do to fix this.

 

“Come back to bed,” Matt says after a moment, and Shiro looks up in surprise.

 

“What?”

 

“Come back to bed,” Matt repeats. “Well, settle Alric down first, I guess, but then come back to bed. I’m feeling a little better now, and I want you here. We’ll figure it out.”

 

“Can you get Alric back to sleep?” Shiro asks Allura. “I don’t know if I’ll go off again, I can’t be holding him if I do —”

 

She smiles sadly. “Of course, darling,” she says, because they’ve had too many of these nights already, and for some reason she agreed to have a child with a man who can’t even be trusted with his son when he’s had a bad turn, because some of his opponents in the arena had been that small, too.

 

Allura doesn’t have an amazing singing voice, but she’s at least decently in tune, and Shiro’s read that babies prefer the voices of the people who gave birth to them over anyone else’s. Alric likes her lullabies, the Altean songs that Shiro suspects aren’t lullabies at all, or if they are, they’re none that he wants to understand. The Alteans weren’t a kind people, even to their own, and he doesn’t like the nursery stories that Allura happily recounts to him, although he knows better than to tell her to stop recounting them to Alric. 

 

It takes a while, Allura singing and rocking Alric and Shiro on the floor and Matt still pressed up against the headboard, wrapped up in as many quilts as he could reach without moving from his spot, but eventually Alric quiets and drifts back into sleep, and Allura carefully places him back into his blankets in the repurposed box they’d borrowed from Matt, and then carries the box all the way to the far side of the room, away from his parents and their problems.

 

“Okay. Figuring it out,” Matt says when she returns. “We can do this.”

 

“Really, it’s okay —” Shiro tries.

 

“Don’t start,” Matt says, cutting him off. “If you really want to leave, fine, but don’t do it because you think that’s what I want. I don’t.”

 

“Me neither,” Allura says, which Shiro can’t understand, because he almost hurt her in his panic, he  _ would _ have hurt her if her reflexes hadn’t been as good as they are. He has no idea why she wants him at the best of times; certainly not on nights like these.

 

“Okay. I’m just — everything’s too much to deal with you coming at me right now, I’m sorry,” Matt tells him. “But if I’m not looking at you, I think you can move. I think that’ll be okay.”

 

“Where do you want me?” Shiro asks him.

 

“Where do you want to be?” Matt counters.

 

“Wherever you want me,” Shiro says, honestly, but Matt scowls at that and looks like he’s going to start arguing before Allura cuts him off.

 

“Well, you certainly shouldn’t be next to each other, so how about I take the middle? I’m a stranger, but I’m not Shiro,” she tells Matt. “Would that work?”

 

“Yeah, I think so,” Matt says after a moment. “I don’t know if I’m going to sleep, but I think that way I probably won’t fly off the handle.”

 

“The handle of what?” Allura queries, her tone light and conversational, even though Shiro knows that she knows exactly what that expression means. 

 

She climbs into bed and Matt turns towards the far wall, and Shiro tries to move as fast and quietly as he can to slide into bed on Allura’s other side.

 

“It’s an Earth idiom,” Matt says slowly. “Actually, an English idiom, there are a lot of languages on Earth and that’s one of them. English is my first language, and Shiro’s second. I don’t know any Japanese, so I can’t speak to that, but English has a lot of really colorful idioms.”

 

“Japanese does too, but in a different way,” Shiro offers quietly, hoping that his voice will be a comfort instead of a terror. He can’t see Matt very well over Allura, but she’s relaxed against Shiro, and there’s no sounds of distress from Matt.

 

“English idioms are weirder,” Matt says.

 

“Tsume no aka wo senjite nomu,” Shiro says. “Brew and drink the dirt from under a person’s fingernails.”

 

“Excuse me?” Matt asks.

 

“Take a lesson from a wise person,” Shiro explains.

 

“Okay,” Matt says. “You win. Japanese is weirder. You’re weirdos.”

 

“Jumping down the volcano,” Allura offers.

 

“And that’s…?”

 

“Fucking,” Allura explains, grinning.

 

“Alright, you’re  _ both _ weirdos, happy?” Matt asks.

 

“Most definitely,” Allura says. “Altean is a wonderful tongue. One of the most musical languages in the galaxy.”

 

“I love you,” Shiro tells her, “but it’s really not. It sounds like something between stepping on a lego and the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show.”

 

Matt snickers, and Allura protests, “I’ve seen plenty of that show since Pidge set up their data connection, and I fail to see the comparison.”

 

“At least the obsession with status and formality I kind of get,” Shiro says. “Japanese has that too. Keigo.”

 

“One of the many things I love about English,” Matt says. “Everyone’s equal in the eyes of verbs.”

 

“You have a very rude language,” Shiro tells him, and Matt snorts.

 

“Don’t even,” he says. “Pidge studied Japanese for a while and I remember them complaining about it, they said that Japanese people hate it too.”

 

“Not all Japanese people,” Shiro says. “Well, okay. Almost everyone. Except old people complaining about the internet.”

 

“You weren’t allowed to hate it with Altean,” Allura says. “I don’t think it would have even occurred to anyone to hate it. It simply was.”

 

“Everything I hear about the Altean Empire just sounds like someone’s racist grandpa yelling about brown people,” Matt says.

 

“Brown people?” Allura asks quizzically.

 

“Long, ugly story,” Matt says. “Earth is fucked up, and for the last six hundred years or so, the people who have my skin color have been the chief fuckups. Humans love excuses to hate each other.”

 

“Alteans didn’t hate each other,” Allura says. “But we were taught to hate everyone else, or at least pity them for not being us. It’s still so strange to me that the people of this galaxy remember us as guardians of peace. I suppose we were, but it was the peace on the end of a sword.”

 

“Pax Romana,” Matt offers. “Latin idiom. Came from an empire that existed on Earth a long time ago. It’s the peace that comes because all of your enemies are dead.”

 

“Yes, that does sound accurate,” Allura says softly. “I think my father wanted to build something different, but the galaxy wasn’t ready for it, and in the end, it destroyed us. But if we had done it sooner — maybe we would have survived. Maybe not as many of peoples we had hurt would have turned on us to ally with the Galra, and Zarkon wouldn’t have won.”

 

“Is that what you’re trying to do?” Matt asks. “The Altean Empire version 2.0?”

 

“No,” Allura says fiercely. “Never again.”

 

“You know, you live long enough, you hear that phrase a lot,” Matt says, and Shiro thinks back to his own history lessons, the way his teachers and his books had politely talked around the horrors that his homeland had brought upon people who’d done nothing but live in a place that someone turned their eye to and thought,  _ mine _ . He hadn’t understood why people cared so much about comfort women, or the Three Alls Policy, or Unit 731, so long after these things happened; he’d thought it was just old people who couldn’t let go of the past, the same people who complained about Japanenglish and hāfu and his mom, just on the other side. And then Kerberos happened, and everything he’s seen in this war, everything he’s done, everything that was done to him, everything that  _ will _ be done to him and Allura and Alric and every single person he loves if they don’t win — and Shiro understands, even if some part of him still wishes he didn’t.

 

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” he tells Matt. “We’re going to make something that no one will have to apologize for. No more never agains.”

 

“I think I understand some of why they did it, though,” Allura admits. “Part of it was fear, of course, and greed — but when I look at Alric, I don’t think of my principles. I only want him to be safe. I want him to live in a time of peace.”

 

“Even if it comes on the end of a sword?” Matt asks.

 

“Even that,” Allura says. “But I must think of my principles, because I don’t want his legacy to be built on the bones of the people who died so that he would live. Some will die, of course. Many already have. That’s what happens when you fight a war, even a righteous one. But I’ll do what I must to make the peace that comes afterwards a true peace, not a Roman peace, and that will be the world he inherits.”

 

“Well, them’s some fighting words,” Matt says after a moment.

 

“Now that expression I like,” Allura says. “Wars of words. I wish that was how wars were fought.”

 

“They will be, some day,” Shiro says.

 

“I’d like to believe that, but I’m not so sure,” Allura says, sadly. “My father thought that, and he was so terribly wrong.”

 

“Then I hope they will be,” Shiro says. “And I’ll do my best to make things that way.”

 

“After everything, still an optimist,” Matt says softly, and it’s dim in his cottage even with the light left on, but Matt shifts himself up, and Shiro can see him now over the curve of Allura’s shoulder, propped up on one of his many pillows and looking down on them both — and he can see Shiro from there. And he’s okay.

 

“You used to be,” Shiro blurts out, then winces, but Matt just looks thoughtful.

 

“I used to be,” Matt agrees. “But I’m not now. I can’t be. If I was, I’d go even crazier than I already am, and that’s saying something.”

 

“I think I have to be. I think if I wasn’t, I’d be dead already. One way or another,” Shiro admits, and Matt doesn’t look surprised, just nods knowingly as Allura pulls Shiro in to curl up against her side. Shiro hesitantly drapes his arm across her midsection, his fingers barely brushing up against Matt on her other side, ready to pull back the instant he sees any fear or discomfort from Matt — but Matt just smiles at him, briefly, and Allura rests her cheek against his forehead, steady and warm.

 

“Now you, I’m not so sure about,” Matt tells her.

 

“I want to be,” Allura says. “I try to act as though I am. I present myself as though I am. I imagine that most of the people we fight alongside would tell you that I am an optimist; that I believe that one day, wars will be fought with words.”

 

“But you’re not,” Matt says. “And you don’t.”

 

“No, I’m not,” she agrees. “And I don’t.”

 

“So why tell me that?” Matt asks her. “If you have a reputation to maintain?”

 

“Because you could sense it already,” Allura says. “And I don’t think you will abuse the information.”

 

“I wouldn’t even know who to abuse it to,” Matt says, wryly. “Although I guess I could pull a King Midas, whisper it into a hole in the ground and let the galaxy know that way.”

 

“King Midas?” Allura asks, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Don’t ask me, I don’t know what he’s talking about either,” Shiro tells her.

 

“Your English is really good, I forget that you didn’t go to school in the U.S. before the Garrison,” Matt tells him. “I guess Japan isn’t big on Greek mythology?”

 

“Not so much,” Shiro says.

 

“It’s a story from Earth,” Matt tells Allura. “From a place called Greece, a long, long time ago. It’s about a famous king named Midas.”

 

“A good king?” Allura asks. “We have those stories.”

 

“No, it’s not that kind of story,” Shiro tells her. “I don’t even know this story, but I can already tell you that it’s not like an Altean story.”

 

“A really fucking stupid king, actually,” Matt says. “Do I even want to know what an Altean story is like?”

 

“If you want to sleep at all tonight — no,” Shiro tells him, and Allura sighs.

 

“Shiro is a delicate soul,” she tells Matt, who laughs. “Well, I don’t think any of us are going to fall asleep any time soon, so tell us your story of the really fucking stupid king.”

 

“It’s not my story,” Matt says. “If you want one of those, I guess I can tell the Purim story, that one’s pretty funny. And boozy. You’re actually religiously required to get totally smashed, it’s great.”

 

“I didn’t know you were still religious,” Shiro says.

 

“I’m not,” Matt tells him. “I mean, for me, most of it was about my family and the people at my synagogue, and I don’t have either of those here, so… No. But the stories are still good.”

 

“I’d prefer your story over someone else’s,” Allura says. “Tell us your boozy religious story, then.”

 

“Okay,” Matt starts, shifting a bit higher to properly sit against the headboard. “Well, the first thing you have to know about Jews is that people keep trying to murder us all, but we’re pretty fucking good at surviving anyway…”

  
  


*

  
  


They’re all understandably subdued the next morning, sleepy and slow as the sun claws its way above the mountains, fighting the fog as it goes. He and Allura have to leave barely after the dawn, needed back on the Castle for more war maps, more meetings, more cereal grain yields, and probably another week where they’ll only see Alric for a few hours here and there, and each other outside of their work even less. Shiro already has the beginnings of a dull headache just thinking about how many urgent messages are lurking in his inbox.

 

He and Allura try to tell Matt to go back to bed after the alarm drags them out of sleep, gritty-eyed and groaning, but Matt just waves them off and gets up anyways. 

 

“I can nap later, I want to send you off,” Matt says, yawning as he gropes around the bedside table for his prosthetic liners and just knocks his glasses off instead. 

 

On his way to deal with a unhappy-sounding Alric, Shiro nearly stoops over to pick them up, but then realizes how it would seem to Matt, still muddled from sleep with Shiro looming over him; so he gets down on the floor instead, kneeling to fetch them and hand them up to Matt, who’s looking at him with a puzzled frown.

 

“Thanks,” Matt says slowly, and Shiro smiles at him before shuffling backwards so he can go comfort his son.

 

They hadn’t planned to stay overnight, so breakfast is some kind of local porridge — “Tuber-based,” Matt grimly informs them — and the foul-smelling tea, which Allura seems to enjoy and he and Shiro stoically suffer through. Matt looks surprised when Shiro attempts to tempt Alric with a bite-sized piece of boiled vegetable instead of handing him over to Allura to nurse again.

 

“We’re weaning him off of breastmilk,” Allura explains. “I’m told it’s average for a human infant, but it’s terribly early for an Altean one, even a hybrid, and it’s not what I’d prefer for him, but…”

 

“In case something happens,” Shiro says. “So he can eat if Allura’s not there to nurse him.”

 

“You guys really do have a lot of plans for him,” Matt says, watching Alric reluctantly accept the vegetable and then immediately spit it out.

 

“Yes, we do,” Allura says. “Although I wish we had more plans about his future and less about his immediate survival.”

 

“Well, the future isn’t worth much to you if you’re not around to see it,” Matt says. “So survival is a good place to start.”

 

Allura finishes her bowl around the same time Matt does, but Shiro has barely touched his, occupied by trying to feed a grumpy, squirming Alric, who’s refusing the vegetables with increasingly harder slaps.

 

“Here, darling, I’ll feed him, you eat,” Allura says, plucking Alric out of Shiro’s lap, and Shiro gratefully bolts down his porridge before getting up to start bringing their things down to the cruiser, Matt following to help. 

 

They don’t talk as they pick their way down the hill, too focused on finding the path in the early morning fog and then watching out for burrow holes in the goat field. Shiro’s not looking forward to leaving here, but he is looking forward to not having to deal with this field; he’s already been jabbed by something thorny several different times, and the dewy grass drags wetly against pant legs, turning the fabric uncomfortably damp. 

 

They deposit their load in the cruiser, and they’re almost back at the border of the field when Matt asks, “What were you dreaming about?”

 

“Hmm?” Shiro asks, distracted by a near collision with a thorn bush.

 

“Last night,” Matt says. “Whatever you were dreaming about before you woke up.”

 

“Oh,” Shiro says.

 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to answer —” 

 

“Breaking your wrist,” Shiro says.

 

“Oh. Yeah. That’s a fun one,” Matt says as starts up the trail, Shiro following. “Kept me safe in the end, though, between that and the knee.”

 

“I didn’t keep you safe at all,” Shiro says. “You weren’t safe from me.”

 

“You did, actually,” Matt says. “Without you, without what you did, I would have died in that arena.”

 

“You went to a labor camp,” Shiro says bitterly. “Was that better?”

 

“I survived it,” Matt says. “I wouldn’t have survived the arena, not then.”

 

“And you would now?” Shiro asks.

 

“I’ve learned some things,” Matt says, so quietly Shiro can barely hear him, and then: “Do you remember any of the other parts?”

 

“What other parts?” Shiro asks. “What happened after you went to the camp? Not much. I kind of… went away, after that.”

 

“No, when they still had us both,” Matt says. “The other things you did.”

 

“I did other things?” Shiro asks, horrified, and Matt pauses and looks back at him.

 

“I couldn’t see anything,” Matt says. “I wasn’t a fighter, I was half blind, I was  _ vulnerable _ — and you stopped any of the others from touching me. You made sure I got food and water, even if it meant that you didn’t. You slept between me and everyone else so that anyone trying to get to me would have to go through you, and I know someone did try a few times, because I remember you fighting them off. I don’t even know if I would have survived the cages without you, much less the arena.”

 

“…I didn’t remember,” Shiro says after a moment.

 

“I do,” Matt says, and starts walking again. “It happened. I thought you should know.”

  
  


*

  
  


“I like him,” Allura announces as she and Shiro troop down the hill to their cruiser, Alric wiggling interestedly in Shiro’s arms at the new sights and sounds. “He’s a bit —”

 

“Edgy?” Shiro offers.

 

“But it’s fun,” Allura says. “You know I love a challenge. And he doesn’t let you be all noble and self-sacrificing, even with your shared tragic past.”

 

“So does he pass muster?” Shiro asks.

 

“Yes, I think he does,” Allura says, thoughtfully, and then admits: “Perhaps in more ways than our original plan. I really do like him.”

 

“I thought I was picking up on something like that,” Shiro says. “I wasn’t sure, though.”

 

“I’m happy for you to have your own lovers, you know that,” Allura says. “As long as you tell me, which you have. And I don’t think children will be a concern here?”

 

“No, he’s cisgender,” Shiro says, and she shakes her head a bit.

 

“Humans,” she says. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but your species is quite peculiar.”

 

“Yeah, I’m getting that sense,” Shiro says.

 

“But yes, if he were interested — I’d be interested as well,” Allura continues.

 

“Interested as in sex?” Shiro queries as they reach the cruiser. “With him? With us?”

 

“With you both to start, I think,” she says. “Do you want to fly us home or should I?”

 

“I’ll take it this time, I’ve been through this system before,” Shiro says. “If you take Alric.”

 

“Leaving me with the stickier option, I see,” she says, lifting Alric out of his arms and only wincing a bit when Alric shrieks happily right in her ear. “Though how he gets so sticky in the absence of sticky things, I’ll never know.”

 

“I think it’s just the baby vortex,” Shiro says. “Remember, Xio was the same way.”

 

“Let’s hope Alric grows out of that stage faster than she did,” Allura says, and grins down at Alric, reaching out to tap his nose playfully. “Yes, my dear, I’m talking about you!”

 

“So just sex?” Shiro asks her as he flips through the safety check and tries to listen to the weather report from their next jump spot over Alric’s loud babbling.

 

“No, not just sex,” Allura says, and thankfully gives Alric back his teething ring; Shiro certainly doesn’t want to stifle his language development, but it’s quite loud in this small space. “If he were interested — not just sex.”

 

“We’re not going to have much of a chance for anything beyond a few nights here and there,” Shiro reminds her. “If he’s still our contingency plan. The whole point is for him to be a secret.”

 

Shiro finishes the safety check and they lift off, grass flattening and waving beneath them as they rise above the hills into the endless, yawning sky. He can’t quite tell at this distance, but he thinks he sees a shadow that might be Matt, standing in front of his cottage and watching them go.

 

“…But it’s not right, what we’re doing, leaving him out here alone,” Shiro adds quietly. “I left him alone before because I thought he wanted it that way, but now I don’t think he does. He hasn’t said it in so many words, but —”

 

“No, you’re probably right — on both counts,” Allura agrees as she bounces Alric on her knee, making him burble and grin around his teething ring. “But I’m not sure we have much of a choice for the moment.”

 

“For the moment?” Shiro echoes. “I don’t think this war is going to end any time soon.”

 

“It can’t go on forever. And if things go right, we won’t leave him out here alone,” she promises. “If things go wrong — well, he won’t be alone then either.”

 

“It seems strange to be making plans after you’ve only met him once,” Shiro says. “And I still don’t know him very well, not really.”

 

“If he’s not interested, he’s free to decline. Besides, I was making plans practically from the moment I met you,” Allura says. “Some of them even came true.”

 

“Plans, huh?” Shiro asks, and Allura chuckles.

 

“Takashi Shirogane, I knew the first time I saw you that I wanted to have you,” she says.

 

“You do,” Shiro says. “Have me.”

 

“Yes, I do,” she agrees, and Shiro loves her for how she says it; not even a declaration, but a simple statement of fact. “And I’m terribly lucky that you want me to. And now it sounds like Matt may want to have you too.”

 

“I think I’d like that,” Shiro says after a moment of thought.

 

“And now you see why I’m making plans,” Allura says with a grin.

 

“Not sure  _ he’d _ like that, though,” Shiro says. “Sex, yes, definitely. But our kind of bed games… I don’t know.”

 

“As I said, free to decline,” Allura says. “But I get a sense about him.”

 

“Yeah, me too,” Shiro admits. “When I was here the first time… Yeah. I think I saw a little bit of it.”

 

“Good glimpse?” Allura asks slyly, and Shiro smiles despite himself.

 

“Very good,” he says. “So maybe he’d want to do it, but… I’m still not sure that we should. Or even could. Neither him nor I are the most stable, separate or together.”

 

“You were with him before,” Allura says. “It’s not the same thing, of course, not nearly as complicated, but even last night — it wasn’t ideal, certainly, but we three seemed to have managed it. How were things the first time?”

 

“Well, nothing major happened, nothing like last night, but we both had some moments,” Shiro says. “We talked. We figured it out.”

 

“Then yes, I think we could,” Allura says. “At least I’d like to try.”

 

“I was surprised how free with him you’ve been this visit,” Shiro says. “More than usual, at least. You don’t talk a lot about Altea or your people to… well, anyone.”

 

“I’ve been… comfortable,” Allura admits. “More than I would normally be. Certainly more than I expected to be.”

 

“Interesting choice of words,” Shiro says. “I wouldn’t describe him as a very comfortable person. At least not any more.”

 

“In his own way, he still is,” Allura says. “For me, at least. It helps that he’s Pidge’s brother, of course — my family’s family — but he’s certainly not deferential towards me, he’s not afraid of me, and what things he does want from me he wants from Allura, not from the Crown Princess of Altea. That’s not a combination I often find.”

 

Shiro sighs. “You know, most people would say that it’s a bad idea to get any more involved with him.”

 

“I daresay most people wouldn’t approve of quite a number of the things you and I do,” Allura says. “And we’re already involved, for better or worse. Do you think he’ll keep his promise?”

 

“Yeah, I do,” Shiro says. “I trust him. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.”

 

“And that's what matters in the end, isn't it?” Allura says. “The faith that despite it all, we can still be good to each other.”

 

“Good to each other is one thing, but good for each other is another,” Shiro says. “You were there last night.”

 

“Yes, I was,” Allura says quietly.

 

“And it’s not like I haven't freaked out on you before. Sometimes I’m still not even sure  _ I _ should be doing this,” Shiro admits. “I’m better than I used to be, but I’m still not… well.”

 

“I know, darling,” Allura says. “I knew when we started. We all do what we can with what we have, and we find ways to make it work for us nonetheless. Some things can’t be worked around, of course, but if there is a way…”

 

“Then it’s worth finding,” Shiro says.

 

“What happened to you — what happened to you both — it shouldn’t stop you from living,” Allura says. “They shouldn’t get to have that, too. And I’ll be there. I think it’ll work.”

 

“We might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves here,” Shiro says wryly. “We haven't even asked him yet.”

 

“Well, we'll also make other plans, of course,” Allura says. “But like I said before. I have a sense.”

 

“You and your senses,” Shiro says, smiling to himself.

 

“My senses are wonderful,” Allura protests. “My instincts are keen and my decisions are always wise and befitting of royalty, and you should always listen to me.”

 

“Like your decision to try that spiky fruit Pidge bought last week even though Coran explicitly told you that he’d encountered it before and it makes Alteans trip balls?” Shiro asks.

 

“My decisions are usually wise and befitting of royalty,” Allura amends. “And the effects of the fruit were quite pleasant once Hunk built me that pillow fort to calm down in.”

 

“I hope you’re not planning on pissing Pidge off any time soon, because I’m pretty sure they got the whole thing on video,” Shiro informs her. “All six hours.”

 

“I’m sure I look marvelous in it,” Allura says, unconcerned.

 

“You always look marvelous,” Shiro says.

 

“See? Marvelous and sensible,” Allura says. “I make excellent decisions and I look good doing it. And therefore this will work.”

 

“Let’s hope,” Shiro says.

 

“I always do,” Allura says. “And I’d say it's worked out pretty well for me so far. So there.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for PTSD symptoms, a disassociative episode, discussions of imperialism and war crimes, and reference to suicidal ideation.


	4. Third

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings at the end. This chapter is the one that really earns the E rating.

They arrive as the sun just finishes sinking down past the ragged teeth of the mountains. Its last defiant rays streak across the cruiser’s windshield, temporarily blinding Shiro, but Allura sets the cruiser down with ease, her eyes easily shifting to accommodate the glare. They’re both quiet as she begins the shutdown, the motors’ roar whining into a hum and then silence, and then they collect their things and depart for Matt’s hill, blasters in hand and their load light on their backs without Alric or his knapsack of necessary supplies.

 

Shiro made sure to radio ahead to Matt that they were coming, even though it took almost an hour to break through the static and finally hear the crackle of Matt’s voice. Sure enough, as he and Allura tromp through the goat field, Allura hiking up her skirts to avoid the clinging, sharp grass, Shiro sees the distant, unmoving shape of someone at the top of the hill, waiting for them.

 

“No Alric this time?” Matt asks when they finally crest the hill, Allura hopping in place a bit as she tries to dislodge a shard of rock from the tread of her boot.

 

“No Alric,” Shiro agrees. “We thought tonight could be for us adults.”

 

Matt raises an eyebrow at this. “To do what with, exactly? I thought I’d already been vetted to satisfaction.”

 

“You have,” Allura calls, and finally triumphantly pulls the shard out from where it’d lodged, tossing it over the side of the hill with an expression of vengeful satisfaction. “We’re not here for that.”

 

“Then what’re you here for?” Matt asks. “You were kind of vague when you radioed me.”

 

“Can we come inside?” Shiro asks.

 

“Yeah, okay, sure,” Matt says. “Be my guests. Put my service to the test. Again.”

 

“Thank you,” Allura says sincerely, and they step over the threshold.

 

After the chill of the mountains, the quiet warmth rising from Matt’s floor is a relief, and something in Shiro’s mind slots into place like a tumbler in a lock at the sound of the door closing, that seventh sense that’s always searching for danger going dormant, like his body knows he’s safe here, even as his mind tells him he’s no such thing. Matt’s cottage is no safer than the rest of the world, the locks no stronger and the inhabitant no less motivated by his own needs and desires; but it feels like it is, a place outside of the world, like the fog even now creeping against the windows seals the three of them off from their lives beyond it. 

 

Shiro looks over to Matt, wondering if he ever feels something similar, if that’s why he chose this place — but Matt is just frowning slightly as he disarms and wiggles out of his coat, although Shiro notices that he shrugs out of his shoulder holster too, blaster going on a shelf and hanging the holster on the peg next to his coat. He’s been wearing one every time Shiro’s come here, even though according to Matt himself, most days he doesn’t venture much farther than his yard outside, and some days not even that.

 

Shiro thinks about Matt tinkering away up here, going armed alone in his own home kilometers away from any people, and he sympathizes. Haggar made it so that Shiro’s never unarmed, his prosthetic turning from a limb to a weapon in a moment’s reflex, and some nights that knowledge is the only thing that lets him sleep, but he still carries a few backup knives on him most of the time, replacements for the blaster he used to carry until he nearly shot Keith one groggy morning when Shiro saw a flash of purple out of the corner of his eye. Keith himself never goes anywhere without his knife, and every morning Allura pins her hair up and then slides a few extra hairpins in, innocuous bright things that shoot out a poisoned needle when the heads are twisted the right way. Matt probably has a few extra knives on him too. Shiro’s still honored that he lays his blaster down by the door.

 

“Alright, so if it’s not more vetting, what brings you all the way out here?” Matt asks. “I’m not complaining, but I’m curious. Maybe a little bewildered. Certainly perplexed.”

 

“We have something we’d like to discuss with you,” Allura says.

 

“We may want to sit down for it,” Shiro adds.

 

“That’s not ominous at all,” Matt says, raising an eyebrow, but sits down anyway, gesturing for them to join him.

 

“Nothing bad, I assure you,” Allura tells him. “Merely… deliberate. Possibly lengthy.”

 

“That’s  _ definitely _ ominous,” Matt says. The battered electric kettle starts shrilling, and he starts to rise up from his seat, but Shiro waves him back down.

 

“I’ll get it,” Shiro tells him. “Did you need this for something?”

 

“I remembered you liked the local tea the last time you were here, so I put the water on when I saw your cruiser touch down,” Matt tells Allura.

 

“How did you know I was coming too?” she asks, curious. “You only talked to Shiro, and he said the connection was rather bad.”

 

Matt shrugs. “I had a hunch,” he says.

 

“Allura, we did bring our own case of water this time,” Shiro reminds her. “You don’t have to drink the local tea.”

 

“You’re right, I don’t have to,” Allura says. “But I quite liked it last time, so I shall.”

 

“Please, drink as much of the local stuff as you want,” Matt says. “You too, Shiro. And then I’ll have your case for myself.”

 

Shiro sighs, but sets the kettle and the tea tin down on the table anyway.

 

“So,” Matt says. “What’s this thing that’s so deliberate and lengthy that we have to sit down for it?”

 

“We have an offer,” Allura says. “Several, actually.”

 

“A favor, a gift, and now an offer,” Matt says. “You guys just keep showing up to my door with things.”

 

“They’re not related,” Shiro says, firmly if slightly muffled as he digs through Matt’s cabinets for teacups. “It’s not a package deal. Just because you said yes to those doesn’t mean you have to say yes to this one, too.”

 

“Ones, darling, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Allura reminds him. “We come with options.”

 

“Okay, now you have to tell me, because the suspense is killing me,” Matt says. “What’s your offer?”

 

“Would you like to spend the night with us?” Allura asks.

 

Matt blinks. “Sorry?”

 

“Would you like to spend the night with us?” Allura repeats, patiently. “Here. This night.”

 

“…In what way?” Matt asks, warily.

 

“As I said, we have a number of options to offer. We can have dinner and conversation; stay the night here or not as you wish.” Allura says, “An entertaining evening among friends, and Shiro and I won’t be offended or disappointed.”

 

“And the other options?” Matt asks, and Allura smiles. 

 

“An entertaining evening of a different sort,” she says.

 

“I’ve never been seduced by royalty before,” Matt says after a moment.

 

“Not seduced,” Allura corrects him. “I don’t want anything of you that you don’t want to give from the start.”

 

“Neither of us do,” Shiro adds as he returns to his seat, setting the mismatched teacups down in front of them.

 

“We don’t chase,” Allura tells Matt. “We offer.”

 

“I know that it’s awkward to spring it on you like this, but you don’t have a vidcom connection out here, and we thought it’d be even more awkward to do it over radio,” Shiro adds.

 

“Yeah, you were right about that,” Matt says, distractedly. “Have to say, this is really not what I expected when you told me you were coming.”

 

Allura smiles. “We had an enjoyable visit last time, and Shiro the time before that. It’s not that strange.”

 

“Your standards for enjoyable are interesting,” Matt tells her. “And to be honest, I’m still surprised that I got away from my last time with Shiro with my head still attached to my neck after you found out. I know you said you didn’t care, but…”

 

“Jealousy bores me, and I’m not upset at the thought of Shiro with someone else. He could go to his knees for you right now and I wouldn’t be upset,” Allura says, and then grins. “On the contrary.”

 

“…So this is your thing,” Matt says. “Huh.”

 

“A bit,” Allura says. “I don’t get to brag about him often, at least not like this, and it’s nice to share with someone else who appreciates him as well.”

 

“But mostly we just like you,” Shiro says. “I like you. Allura likes you. And we thought this could be good.”

 

“We don’t make this kind of offer to many people,” Allura says. “Not with our positions. Certainly not to people whom we don’t trust.”

 

“You trust me?” Matt asks, eyebrow raised.

 

“Enough,” Allura says, and Matt takes that for what it is, because he doesn’t get offended, just thinks for a moment then nods decisively.

 

“Alright. What’s on the table?” he asks, and actually pats the tabletop and then gestures outward, like he’s unfolding a deck of cards onto the wood.

 

“Well, dinner,” Allura says. “Conversation. Sleep. Probably not a walk down to your goat field to stargaze, we noticed it was getting quite cloudy, but I do want to do that eventually, especially if you know any of the local star stories. Kissing and touching, without any orgasms involved. Sex, with both Shiro and I at once or just with him. I like you very much,” she tells Matt, “but I don’t think we know each other quite well enough for me to be comfortable without him.”

 

“Yeah, agreed,” Matt says, and she beams.

 

“It’s so nice when potential bedmates are of a mind,” she says. “So yes, sex. And —” she looks to Shiro for confirmation, and he nods. “And there are certain more… intense bed games on the table as well.”

 

“Games?” Matt echoes. “Games of what?”

 

“Power,” Allura says. “Control.”

 

Matt darts a glance at Shiro, his body language suddenly becoming a lot less relaxed.

 

“What, you ordering me around?” he asks Shiro, a bitter twist to his mouth, and Matt hides it pretty well, but Shiro can still see the tension in his muscles, the slight change in breathing, like some part of Matt is readying himself to run.

 

“No,” Shiro says quickly, “no. The opposite, actually,” and Matt actually stares at him in surprise.

 

“Well, you’re career military and Japanese,” Matt says after a moment. “I guess you can’t get out of that without picking up at least a little submission kink.”

 

“The military part I totally get, but the Japanese part?” Shiro asks, and Matt snorts.

 

“Your native land is kinky as fuck,” he says. “It wasn’t my people who invented shibari and tentacle porn.”

 

“Your people? What, Arizonans?” Shiro teases.

 

“Hardy-har,” Matt says dryly, but there’s something strangely wistful about the way he continues. “Just when I think I know you, you surprise me again.”

 

“Good surprise?” Shiro asks cautiously.

 

“Yeah, I think so,” Matt says slowly, and the tension finally leaves him, replaced with something dark and promissory, a flash of the edge Shiro had glimpsed before, like a knife sliding up a sleeve. “I think — Yes. Good surprise.”

 

“So you’re interested in that option, then?” Allura asks.

 

“I’m interested,” Matt says. “But depends what you mean by intense.”

 

“Intensity of feeling, generally,” Allura says. “These sort of things can potentially provide an... emotional release equal to or far greater than the physical.”

 

“It’s not what we actually do that’s intense, not really,” Shiro offers. “Not Allura and I. That’s not our thing. But it feels intense when you’re in that headspace.”

 

“And of course we won’t ask you to do anything that you don’t wish to or feel comfortable with,” Allura adds.

 

“But I thought you might enjoy yourself,” Shiro tells him. “And me. I thought you might enjoy me, too.”

 

“...Okay then,” Matt says. “Mark me down as very interested. Hell, let’s say extremely interested.”

 

“I certainly do hope so,” Allura says. “I think this could be extremely fun.”

 

“So… how does this work?” Matt asks, gesturing between all three of them and then making some sort of gesture that… well, Shiro doesn’t even know what that’s supposed to be.

 

“We talk,” Shiro explains. “We figure out what we want, what we don’t want, we settle safety things. And then we go to bed.”

 

“…I haven’t done this before,” Matt admits, fiddling with his teacup. “Exactly. The way it sounds like you two do it. This is new.”

 

“That’s alright,” Allura tells him. “I have quite a lot of experience, and so has Shiro, on his side of it. I’ll be there to help and to keep an eye on things, and if at any point you want to stop, or need a break — you tell us.” Shiro nods firmly.

 

“We’ll tell you too,” Shiro adds. “And trust us, if you tell us to stop or wait, we really will listen.” 

 

Matt looks at him hard at that, but finally nods. “Okay.”

 

“I’ll start then,” Allura says decisively, reaching for the kettle. “Matt, Shiro — tea?”

 

“No thanks,” Matt says. Shiro makes a pained face and shakes his head.

 

“I have no idea how you drink that stuff,” he tells Matt.

 

“Because it’s better than the alternatives,” Matt says. “Local water and alien goat milk that I’m allergic to. Yech.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, this tastes wonderful to me,” Allura says. “Actually, Matt, I might trouble you for some to take back with us.”

 

Shiro sighs. “The whole cruiser is going to smell like that stuff. And probably our kitchen too.”

 

“You and your delicate sensibilities,” Allura says, shaking her head.

 

“Delicate — Allura, we know Keith and Xio,” Shiro reminds her.

 

“Fair point,” she says. “Alright. I stay in charge of myself, and I’ll be in charge of anyone who wishes to submit to it.” She bounces her eyebrows significantly at Shiro, who chuckles. “I won’t be restrained in any manner. I don’t dole out humiliation and I certainly won’t take it. I’m amenable to inflicting pain should my bedmates want it, but that’s generally not what I’m interested in, and I’m definitely not interested in receiving it. I don’t think I’m comfortable having any kind of penetrative sex with you, Matt, but I would be open to experimenting with other forms of sexual contact; I do enjoy touch, sexual and otherwise, but please be clear in your intent. Definitely don’t surprise me with any touch or sudden movement towards me, for your own safety as much as mine. My combat instincts are quite well-honed and rather… sensitive, at the moment. And I would prefer to keep my titles out of bed, please. Here I’m just Allura.”

 

“ _ Just _ ,” Shiro echoes, shaking his head disbelievingly, and she knocks his shoulder with her own.

 

“Hush, you,” Allura says. “Oh, and you were correct, I do shapeshift in bed,” she adds to Matt, who looks at her askance.

 

“He really does tell you everything, doesn’t he,” Matt says.

 

“Not everything,” Shiro says. “The important parts. And the funny parts.”

 

“I had to get Pidge to explain to me what clownfish were,” Allura tells Matt. “You’re on the right track, but not quite. We’ll talk later.”

 

She turns to Shiro expectantly. “Your turn.”

 

“Well, I’m not going to be in charge,” Shiro says. “At all. The whole point is for someone else to be in charge of  _ me _ . Humiliation things aren’t all a no, but a lot of them are hard nos, so blanket ban tonight. As for sex: oral, manual, penetrative — giving or receiving — all on the table. Bondage is… maybe a little advanced for tonight, so let’s say no. I’ll stay put wherever you tell me to, anyway. I’m not going to fight you on anything, so don’t expect that, and I don’t need to know the plan ahead of time. Actually, it’s kind of nice not to. Some pain is good, but don’t hit me or injure me permanently, or in any way that would interfere with me fighting or piloting Black. And, uh, maybe don’t mark me in any way that I couldn’t explain away as a training accident.” 

 

He sighs. “That’s not actually what I want, but… interplanetary politics. Anyway. Don’t mess with my arm. No scat or watersports, come and spit are okay. I’m probably not going to talk much, or at all, but I’ll still be listening.” 

 

He swallows. “Don’t make me hurt you. Either of you. Hard no.”

 

“I won’t,” Matt promises.

 

“Never, darling,” Allura assures him, and Shiro smiles at her gratefully, then turns back to Matt.

 

“I can get pretty out of it,” Shiro warns him. “It may look like I’m disassociating, but I’m not, or if I am it’s the good kind. Allura knows the warning signs to look for if things go bad, listen to her.”

 

“I didn’t know there was a good kind of disassociating,” Matt says.

 

“Trust me, there is,” Shiro tells him. “It can get… pretty loud in my head. It’s nice to have a break.”

 

“Ha,” Matt says. “Yeah, I definitely get that.”

 

“And yourself?” Allura asks politely.

 

“Um,” Matt says, looking slightly overwhelmed. “Okay. Uh, no ties or gags or — you know what, just don’t restrain me in any way, even if you’re just holding me down. Don’t hurt me, and don’t try to shit-talk me either. I’m fine with receiving oral or manual, and giving oral or manual in some positions, but I’m not going to bottom, and I don’t want to deal with anyone else’s bodily fluids other than spit. My brain is pretty messed up, so I might need to tap out if I get triggered by something. If you want to do something  _ to _ me, ask me first. And don’t be weird about my legs.”

 

“Define weird,” Allura says, and Matt scowls.

 

“Don’t be creepy,” he says.

 

“Define —” Shiro starts, and Matt rolls his eyes and says, “Okay, yeah, fine, I get it, weird and creepy are subjective terms in outer space. If we end up in bed I’m going to take off my prosthetics, so don’t… don’t treat me like I’m fragile, or like you don’t notice that three-fourths of my fucking legs are gone, or like I’m two stumps with a torso attached. Treat me like I’m me.”

 

“Have I been —” Shiro asks, troubled, but Matt cuts him off.

 

“No, you haven’t,” he says. “You’ve been good. I’m just… putting it out there.”

 

“I certainly won’t do any of that either,” Allura says, eyebrow raised at the not terribly subtle dodge, and Matt shrugs.

 

“In my experience, it’s still worth saying,” he says. “And I’m not taking orders from anyone. Definitely not from Shiro, but not from you either,” he tells Allura. “Sorry if that’s what you were hoping for.”

 

“Don’t be,” she says. “That wasn’t what I was hoping for, but even if it had been, you don’t want it.”

 

“Do you want to be giving orders?” Shiro asks Matt. “To me. Not to Allura. She doesn’t do that.”

 

“Unless you do tonight?” Shiro asks her, unsure, and she shakes her head, making a face.

 

“No, definitely not,” Allura says.

 

“To Shiro?” Matt says. “Yes, I think I do. If you want me to.”

 

“I do,” Shiro promises him.

 

“And this’ll be, what, battle of the dominants?” Matt asks Allura, doubtfully.

 

“I’d rather not,” she says. “Sharing is so much more fun.”

 

“I can share,” Matt says.

 

“You’re an only child, you’re terrible at sharing,” Shiro tells Allura, and she reaches out and flicks his ear playfully.

 

“For you, darling, it’s worth learning,” she says. “Could you go get the test thing?”

 

“You’re closer,” Shiro feels the need to point out even as he gets up anyway.

 

“Well, you were the one who packed it, so you know where it is,” Allura says. “At least I hope you did.” 

 

She turns to Matt. “From what I understand of human biology and gender, nothing we might be doing tonight could result in pregnancy, but if you do have that capability to carry a child, please let me know now. I love all the children on the Castle dearly, but I’d prefer to avoid another Xio situation.”

 

“Xio situation?” Matt asks.

 

“Keith and Lance being idiots about a lot of things, but mostly condoms. As in not using them and then sudden surprise baby,” Shiro says as he returns and sets the bioscanner down on the table. “I did pack it.”

 

“Is that how that happened?” Matt asks. “Ha. You know what, from what I remember of them, that doesn’t surprise me at all. And no, I don’t have that capability, and frankly, I’m really glad I don’t.”

 

“Well, that’s one less complication, at least,” Allura says. “As for any disease or infection — yes, I know, terribly unsexy, but necessary nonetheless — we brought along one of the portable test things —”

 

“Bioscanner,” Shiro provides.

 

“— Thank you, bioscanners from the Castle, which can provide an accurate diagnostic of any sexually transmitted anything any of us might have. We don’t, according to our latest medical scans, but we wanted to actually show you, not just tell you,” Allura says to Matt. “It’s not an arduous process, just a tiny prick and a blood sample. We did also bring barrier methods, to use if one of us does have something, or you’d prefer to use them regardless. As a matter of preference, I generally do; when it’s safe not to Shiro generally doesn’t. You may or may not as you wish.”

 

Matt thinks for a moment, then sticks out his hand. “Prick away.”

 

The scanner beeps out a clean bill of health for all three of them — “I told you, no torrid affairs with goatherds,” Matt tells Shiro; “Well, at least you didn’t feel the need to specify no torrid affairs with goats,” Shiro says dryly — and Allura sits back in her chair slightly, her gaze friendly and assessing at once.

 

“Last thing,” she announces. “Are you familiar with the concept of safewords?”

 

“Eh,” Matt says. “Sort of. As a joke.”

 

“Not a very funny joke,” she says, frowning. “Not a joke at all.”

 

“We mostly just ask yes or no for confirmation on things, but sometimes things can get… intense, or a little muddled, so it’s good to have a dedicated communication structure for stops,” Shiro explains. “Hard stops, like “stop everything I’m done right now” stops, or the “stop and wait so I can adjust or catch a breather or whatever” stops. So, safewords. And hand signals, because a lot of the time I just… stop talking.”

 

“I like ridiculous ones,” Allura says cheerfully. “I wanted ‘Buckbeak’.”

 

“But I’m boring,” Shiro says, “so we went with ‘yellow’ for stop and wait and ‘safeword’ for hard stop.”

 

“You’re not  _ boring _ , you’re… predictable,” Allura says.

 

“And hand signals for go, stop and wait, hard stop,” Shiro says, demonstrating them to an interested Matt. “So just make sure I have a hand free.”

 

“You guys sure are into the whole communication thing,” Matt says. “I’m starting to think that your bed games involve more talking about sex than actual sex. Not complaining,” he hastily tacks on. “Just observing.”

 

“It’s important,” Shiro says. “Things can get unclear, and this needs to be really clear: if someone gives a stop, it stops. No matter what, no matter who, no matter when. No judgement. We listen to ourselves and we listen to each other, and if you want to do this — you have to listen, too. You have to agree to this. This part isn’t negotiable.”

 

“No judgement, huh?” Matt asks.

 

“Nobody’s forcing anyone to do anything,” Shiro says. “Nobody does anything they don’t want to do. Even me. Especially me. It’s a choice. Here it’s always a choice. A  _ real _ choice.”

 

“Nice change of pace from the rest of the world,” Matt says softly.

 

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “It is.”

 

“Okay,” Matt says. “Listening. I can do that. I will do that.”

 

“Well!” Allura says brightly. “How would you like to proceed?”

 

“Proceed?” Matt asks, looking faintly alarmed.

 

“I’m afraid Shiro and I are only able to slip away for the night, but none of what we discussed has to happen immediately,” Allura says. “It’d be terribly presumptuous of us to arrive at your door, announce this, and expect you to jump right into bed with us. And Shiro and I have had quite a long time to grow comfortable with each other, whereas you and I… haven’t. If you’d prefer to pass some time together first in a non-sexual manner, we’d be quite happy to do so.”

 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count one kind of weird meet-the-family visit before propositioning me for a kinky threesome as taking it slow,” Matt says. “But it’s just going to feel more awkward trying to do anything else knowing what’s going to come later, so… I’m down to jump right in if you are.”

 

“You’re allowed to say that you’re excited, too,” Shiro says wryly, noting the faint flush starting to rise on Matt’s face.

 

“Fine,” Matt tells him. “I’m also excited,” with a look that makes Shiro swallow hard and Allura snort out a laugh at whatever expression is on Shiro’s face.

 

“Extremely fun,” she says, and gets up to start searching through their bags for the supplies they brought.

 

Shiro gets up too, but Matt grabs his elbow to pull him aside, suddenly serious.

 

“You’re right, I am excited, but… You’re not doing this because you think you owe me, right?” Matt asks him quietly. “For any of it? You don’t.”

 

“I do owe you,” Shiro says. “No, I do. But I don’t owe you this. I want this for myself.”

 

“I still don’t really understand why,” Matt admits, and Shiro reaches out for his hand.

 

“It’s pretty simple,” Shiro says, even though the tangle of past and present between them is anything but. “I like you, I want you, and I trust you. I feel safe with you, you and Allura both. And when I do this, I can stop worrying for a while. Someone else can make the decisions.” He drops a quick kiss to Matt’s knuckles. “You can make the decisions.”

 

“Now that was a move straight out of the fairytale prince playbook,” Matt says after a moment. “You sap. You Disney prince.”

 

“Yep,” Shiro agrees. “Still meant it, though.”

 

“Are we good?” Allura enquires, and after a moment of thought, Matt nods decisively.

 

“Yes,” he says. “We’re good.”

 

“Excellent,” she says. “Then to bed with us.”

 

“Well, I should probably move that pile of papers off of it first,” Matt says, and Shiro helps him shift the small avalanche of notebooks and loose leaf onto his workbench (“My old research,” Matt explains, “I’m trying to write down as much of it as I can remember”) while Allura lays out a few supplies within easy reach of the bed — lube, gloves, condoms — which Matt raises an eyebrow at.

 

“No whips and chains, I see,” he comments.

 

“Like I said, bondage is advanced for tonight and heavy pain play, not our thing,” Shiro says. “Besides, I’ve been whipped before, and it wasn’t a great experience. I’m not eager to repeat it in bed.”

 

“Ha, yeah, same,” Matt says. “Fucking knouts.”

 

Shiro frowns, about to ask about the unfamiliar word, but Allura cuts in, saying, “No offense meant, but I’d prefer it if you two could trade torture stories at a later date.”

 

“You’re no fun,” Matt informs her.

 

“So what are we supposed to do instead?” Shiro asks her, grinning.

 

“Well, to start with, you should come here and get undressed,” Allura tells him, and her voice is still affectionate, but there’s a snap of power to it that wasn’t there a moment ago, and Shiro comes to her, helplessly and happily, something inside him already starting to gentle. She hadn’t asked him for any finesse, so he doesn’t bother with it, stripping down quickly and efficiently, although he does have the presence of mind to put his clothes in a neat pile out of the way; he doesn’t want anyone to trip over them. 

 

No matter how many times they’ve done this, transitions are hard, the awkward bleed between who they are in this place and who they are outside of it. Shiro can’t instantly drop himself in; he’s tried to force it before and failed so miserably, too occupied with trying to be what he thought Allura wanted to actually listen to her when she told him. Instead, they ease into this place like swimmers wading out into the waves, letting the current gently tug them out into somewhere free and vast — and he still has some decisions left, he still has some words on his tongue, but soon he won’t, and he is so very glad already.

 

They’re nearly of a height, he and Allura, but she’s a bit shorter than him, so she has to go up on her toes to press a kiss to his forehead, something equal parts love and absolution. 

 

Then she looks him in the eyes and murmurs, “Kneel for me.” And so he goes.

 

“Of course he still has perfect posture like that,” Matt says after a moment.

 

“Yes, it is quite admirable, isn’t it,” Allura says affectionately.

 

“Admirable wasn’t the word I was thinking of, but sure, that works too,” Matt says.

 

“You’re welcome to stay over there if you wish, Matt, but you’re also very welcome to join me,” Allura tells him. “Remember what we said about sharing.”

 

“What, that you’re bad at it?” Matt says, but he crosses to Allura.

 

She regards him for a moment while Matt stares unblinkingly back, and then she asks, “May I kiss you?”

 

“You may,” Matt says, wryly, and she laughs and leans in, brushing a gentle kiss over his lips.

 

“I’m very glad you’re here with me,” she tells him, sincerely. “I’m glad you’re here with us.”

 

“I’m glad I’m here, too,” Matt says, and raises an eyebrow at Shiro, who’s still kneeling with his hands loose on his thighs, watching them calmly. “Will he move?”

 

“Not until I tell him to,” Allura says, but Matt frowns and leans down slightly to address Shiro.

 

“Are you okay with us talking about you like this?” Matt asks him. “Not to you, but about you?”

 

“Yes,” Shiro says.

 

“A little more descriptive, darling,” Allura says.

 

“It feels good,” Shiro tells them, which Matt looks doubtful at, but it does. Allura talks to him when they do this alone, and the two other people they’ve invited to their bed over the years had too, but Shiro’s surprised at how much he likes this, being lovingly, benevolently ignored. They don’t need him to be entirely present, they don’t need his opinions or input or decisions or judgment; he can just exist for them, simple and uncomplicated, drifting wherever he’s pushed. 

 

Matt may not ever want to be a thing again, and Shiro meant it when he'd told him that he didn’t want to be one either — but here with them, in this moment, it’s such a relief. It’s so exhausting to be a person.

 

“Okay,” Matt says warily, still frowning.

 

“Trust him,” Allura says as she begins to take off her jewelry, carefully pull the poisoned pins from her hair. “He won’t lie to you tonight, and I won’t either. That’s the only way this works.”

 

“Trusting people,” Matt murmurs. “That’s a lot more hardcore than whips and chains.”

 

“But ultimately more rewarding, I think,” Allura says. “Although whips and chains are quite rewarding for some people, too.”

 

Matt makes a noncommittal noise at that, and Allura snorts. 

 

“They may not be to my tastes, but I won’t judge you for your tastes either,” she tells him.

 

“I don’t even know what my tastes are, really. Like I said, I haven’t done this before,” Matt says, but then looks down at Shiro kneeling in front of him, one long hungry sweep down his body. “Although I can say with certainty that this is  _ definitely _ to my tastes.”

 

“To mine as well,” Allura says, eyeing the two of them together with a small, pleased smile. “Well, I’m getting undressed. Matt, you’re welcome to do what’s comfortable.”

 

“I can join the naked party,” Matt says, pulling off his sweater and then nearly getting his glasses stuck in the weave. Allura laughs, and he makes a rude gesture at her, which only makes her laugh more as she begins to work on the buttons at her wrists.

 

Sometimes she tells Shiro to undress her, a part of the easing in, each piece of clothing another step out to sea. But Shiro has the sense that treating Matt like he can’t do things for himself is a bad idea, and Allura has fucked and sucked and fisted Shiro, she’s seen him scream and cry and come and he’s seen her do the same, they know each others’ bodies like the roads to home, but in a way, Shiro gently, reverently unfastening the clasps of the first layer of her dress is one of the most intimate things they do in bed, an intimacy that doesn’t invite outsiders. And so Allura undresses herself tonight, stripping to bare skin with no more self-consciousness than she would have when taking off a coat. 

 

She hasn’t told him to touch her yet, so he waits for her voice or her hands, barely feeling the uneven wood that he’s kneeling on or his own hands on his thighs. The edges of the world are starting to go warm and vague but for the two people in front of him, and Shiro is hyperaware of every single detail of her — the corded muscle of her arms and shoulders, the silvery-white hair feathering down her legs, even the stick-and-poke tattoo on her hip that Lance had drunkenly offered to give her and she had equally drunkenly accepted, three wobbly five-point stars already fading back into her skin — in a way that feels so much bigger than simple desire, so much wilder and more necessary. He wants her, yes, he wants them both — but he isn’t hard, he isn’t going to get hard or get off unless they want him to, because that’s not the kind of hunger he needs to sate tonight.

 

Matt sheds his pants with the same lack of self-consciousness as Allura, but he slows when he gets to his shirt, and he hesitates at the lock of his right prosthetic.

 

“I did a lot of standing and walking today, I’m not really feeling up to standing-up sex, so bed and no legs it is,” he tells Allura. “Makes it a little more complicated, but. Honesty.”

 

Allura grins. “Oh, but there are so many things one can do in a bed,” she says. “And more complicated just means more interesting.”

 

Last time, Shiro hadn’t seen much of Matt, mapping his body by touch rather than sight in the dim lamplight, but Shiro sees him plainly now in the warm haze of lights that Allura left on because she refuses to do this if she can’t see her partners. Matt is pale and almost worryingly thin, more bone than muscle, hipbones sharp enough to slice and the outline of his ribs faintly visible. His forearms are speckled with brown burn scars, his left shoulder sunburst with an old blaster burn; when Matt turns, Shiro can see what he guesses are scars from the knout — four long, jagged ropes of raised scar tissue that criss-cross over Matt’s spine — and when Matt finally pulls off his prosthetic liners, there are more scars from the explosion that ripped apart most of his bottom half, bruises from the right-side prosthetic that still doesn’t fit quite right and old burns and shrapnel gouges in his thighs.

 

“Something amusing you?” Matt asks him, sharp, and Shiro realizes he's been smiling.

 

“You have freckles on your wrists,” Shiro says dreamily. “I didn’t notice before.”

 

Matt stares at him for a long moment, and Shiro meets his gaze, patiently waiting for whatever Matt wants of him — but it’s Allura who speaks first, calling Shiro’s name to get his attention.

 

“I’d quite like to fuck you tonight, if you’re up for it,” she says quietly, and Shiro smiles up at her and nods, so Allura breathes out and shivers and her external genitals refold themselves into something different, longer and thicker, although her phallus doesn’t look anything like any penis Shiro had ever seen; he’d asked her once if that was her species’ other reproductive form and she’d said no, it wasn’t a full shift, but it was easier because she didn’t have to shift her internal organs as well and therefore it was so much more fun.

 

“Nice trick,” Matt comments.

 

“No trickery, just me,” Allura says absently as she steps up where Shiro is kneeling, and he gratefully takes her into his mouth. 

 

“Shiro, my love, a little faster,” she says after a moment. She cups the back of his head, setting the pace that she wants, and he loses himself in the glad work of it, the rhythm and weight and taste of her. 

 

“Stop,” she says after a while, punctuated by a hard warning yank to his hair, and he stops. “Good.”

 

He’s a little lightheaded, sinking down deep into the headspace that he goes to when they do this. Then Matt makes some sort of noise, and the reminder that there’s a third person in the room jabs at Shiro through the haze of focus on her, making him twitch and start, but he stomps down on those instincts hard. Matt isn’t a stranger, and Allura is here. Shiro’s safe with her. He’s safe with them. He’s safe.

 

She also apparently sees right through his mental gymnastics, because she frowns and cups his jaw with her hand, tipping his head back to look at her.

 

“Shiro, are you still here with me? Are you alright? Nod if you are,” and he nods, grateful that she’s not asking him to speak. He still can, but he’s heading to where he can’t, the point where words leave him and his hand signals become his voice. He was so wary of using them the first few times when he actually did have to, terrified of her disappointment and hating himself for his weakness, his failure, even as the warning rumbles of a bad episode came on like a storm rolling over the horizon — but every time she accepted his hard stop without judgement, only steady assurance that he was doing the right thing by listening to himself and being honest with her, and eventually he started to believe that, too.

 

“Can he still talk?” Matt asks, curious.

 

“Probably,” Allura says. “Maybe not. If he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t have to.” 

 

“Although perhaps a reminder would be in order,” she adds, and sits on the edge of bed to again demonstrate to Matt the signs for good, stop and wait, hard stop; and meanwhile Shiro kneels, his bowed head brushing her shins, and he breathes, and he waits.

 

After a while, she stands up, affectionately tousling Shiro’s hair as she goes, and steps back, hands on her hips and mouth pursed.

 

“Now for the truly interesting part,” Matt says dryly, but Allura surveys the bed like she would a war map, eyes narrowed in sharp consideration, and her voice is as firm as a general’s as she says, “If you’re sitting against the headboard — or leaning, whatever is most comfortable — we can have him between us.”

 

“Sounds good,” Matt says, reaching over to set his glasses down on the bedside table and then pulling himself up against the headboard.

 

“Were you wanting to fuck him as well?” Allura asks conversationally as she helps rearrange pillows and push back the quilts.

 

“No,” Matt says. “But I’d like to get off.”

 

“That can be arranged,” Allura says, winking.

 

“And…” Matt adds haltingly, “I don’t want him on top of me. Or above me.”

 

“Of course,” Allura says. “I’ll remember that.”

 

“And I may need to stop to reposition,” Matt continues. “I have some nerve damage in my right stump, I know it breaks the mood —”

 

“Matt,” Allura says. “Of course. If you’re uncomfortable at any point, say so and we’ll figure it out, or stop. That goes for Shiro as well. And me.”

 

“And you’re speaking for him right now?” Matt asks.

 

“For the moment,” Allura says. “But I’ll keep checking in. Speaking of which —” She steps back to where Shiro is still kneeling, still waiting, gently tapping his forehead to get his attention. “Shiro, this plan? Nod for yes, shake for no.”

 

Shiro nods, and she smiles, tracing the shape of his mouth with her thumb.

 

“Excellent,” she says. “Now up with you. On the bed, elbows and knees. Face Matt.”

 

Shiro goes, elbows and knees like she ordered, and after a moment, he feels her hands on him, skimming down his ribs to his hips, her phallus bumping against his thigh. Then she pulls back and he hears the snap of a glove and the pop of a bottle cap, and he sinks back into her care, breathing in and out as she slowly starts to work him open.

 

“Ha,” Matt says. “Wow. That’s… quite the picture.”

 

“He is quite stunning,” Allura agrees.

 

“You are too,” Matt says softly.

 

“Thank you,” Allura says, and Shiro can hear that she’s smiling. “As are you.”

 

“I’m really not,” Matt murmurs.

 

“You really are,” Allura says firmly. “We wouldn’t be here with just anyone.”

 

Her finger finds Shiro’s prostate and Shiro gasps and shudders, pressing back into her hands.

 

“You can touch him, you know,” she tells Matt.

 

Matt reaches out and tentatively strokes along the curve of Shiro’s shoulder, fingers brushing the line where flesh becomes metal, then drops his hands back into his lap.

 

“I’ll wait,” he decides. “You two are gorgeous to watch. And he’s not going anywhere any time soon.”

 

“Neither of us are,” Allura says, and adds a second finger.

 

The rhythm she sets for Shiro is patient and unhurried, taking all the time that she wants from him, and he relaxes back into it — the feel of her fingers inside him and her other hand on his hip, her quiet words of assurance, the bone-deep simplicity of purpose settling into his entire being. She needs him to do exactly what he’s doing right now, and no more. He’s doing the right thing, and he knows that he’s doing the right thing because she knows what that is. She knows, and she’ll tell him, and he doesn’t have to think or worry or second-guess himself or hate himself when he gets it wrong; all he has to do is listen.

 

He dropped his head down after she and Matt stopped talking, focused on feeling and nothing else — but suddenly she reaches forward, yanking his head up and back by his hair, slow enough to be safe but hard enough to hurt.

 

“Look up,” she tells him. “Let’s not forget who we’re in bed with.”

 

Shiro looks up, meeting Matt’s blown-pupiled gaze, and that’s when she shifts the three fingers inside him thicker, and Shiro breathes out shakily but he doesn’t look away, even as she lets go of his hair, because she told him to look, she doesn’t want him to forget, and he’s not going to forget. He’s not going to forget. 

 

“You’re very good at this,” Matt tells Allura, sounding shaky himself.

 

“I try,” she says modestly.

 

Matt doesn’t reach out to touch him, but Shiro keeps looking, and he can feel Matt’s gaze on him as clearly as he feels Allura’s hands on his skin, Allura’s fingers inside him, and the rhythm becomes Shiro moving between them, rocking back into Allura and then forward towards Matt, a push-and-pull as steady as the tides, as the gravity that keeps this moon orbiting its planet. 

 

He could keep going for just as long, but eventually she pulls her fingers out and tells him, “Look wherever you like,” as she moves away from him for a moment.

 

“Look wherever you like,” Matt quietly tells him, echoing Allura, and so Shiro does, and Matt’s mouth curves up into a smile as Shiro doesn’t look away.

 

Allura comes back, done doing whatever she did, and sets a gentle hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “Okay?” she asks.

 

Shiro nods and knocks twice against the bed for good measure, his hand signal for go, and she says to Matt, “Pass me one of those — Actually, you know what, several,” and Matt tosses a few of his hoarded pillows back to her.

 

“Shiro, lay down, on your stomach,” Allura says, pushing between his shoulderblades with the heel of her hand, and he goes, settling into the pillows she’s tucked under his hips that gently curve his body up towards hers. “Good.”

 

And then the pop of the bottle cap, the click of a condom pod, the sound of her slicking herself up, and — “Good,” she whispers to him as she bends over him and then slowly pushes inside him, one long thrust until she’s flush against him. “You’re being so good for us.”

 

She starts out slow, the same rhythm she set before, barely fucking him as much as proving a point. She has him for as long as she wants — minutes or hours or days, it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t get a say in how long she takes — and then he remembers that someone else has him tonight too. 

 

The two opposing claims should worry him, confuse him, but he doesn’t feel trapped between them. He feels held. And they don’t feel opposing at all.

 

Gradually, she speeds up to the pace she usually likes when they do this. The new position has Shiro much closer to Matt than before, and Allura pauses long enough to ask Matt, “Do you want his mouth on you? I don’t know if you’ve had the pleasure, but he’s very talented.”

 

Matt snorts out a laugh. “No, I haven’t,” he says. “And not yet. Later.”

 

“Later it is,” Allura says, and Shiro relaxes into the rhythm of her resumed thrusts and the blessed silence in his head, every slap of her hips another turn of the key unwinding him, falling backwards into a darkness that’s warm, not cold; safe, not sharp —

 

Shiro only realizes he’s closed his eyes when Matt laughs, gentle and fond, and Shiro hazily opens his eyes and looks up again to find Matt watching him, this time with something complicated in his face that Takashi Shirogane would shy from, that Shiro the Black Paladin would have to analyze and account for — but the Shiro that exists in these times with Allura and now Matt doesn’t have to do anything but feel and obey, so he can smile at Matt and close his eyes again, safe in the knowledge that they’ll ask him for nothing here that he can’t give, and whatever it is, he’ll give it gladly.

 

Shiro loses track of how long Allura fucks him for, with the steady, even endurance that speaks of a woman who’s a warrior as much as a diplomat, who knows patience and strength equally. Time always moves strangely in this headspace, running together like sidewalk chalk in the rain — he’d been afraid, when they first started doing this, that if he did lose track of things his mind would send him back to the labs, back to the cages, back to the arena, but the place that he goes to during these times is different than that dark well he’d lived in when Haggar had him, sending his most vulnerable parts down to hide and praying that some shredded remnant of himself would get out of this alive. 

 

This place, with Allura — he’s not afraid. He trusts her. He loves her. He wants to please her. He wants to make her feel good, he wants to be good for her, he wants to be good. And that’s easy here, in a way it never is anywhere else. It’s always so easy. And now Matt is here, and to Shiro’s surprise, it’s easy with him too.

 

Eventually Allura’s smooth thrusts turn jerky, with little moans that tell Shiro that she’s close. He lets her direct him, her hands on his hips pulling him hard against her, until she cries out like someone is knocking the sound out of her and thrusts one last time then stills, panting hard.

 

“Good,” she tells him shakily. “You were so good,” and she folds herself over him, pressing a kiss to his shoulderblade, and then pulls out. She moves away, but Shiro stays where he is -- waiting for what’s next.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to fuck him?” Allura asks Matt.

 

“Tempting, but no,” Matt says. “I have plans. Is he still okay with some pain?”

 

“Ask him yourself, I’m taking a break,” she says, sprawling out next to them.

 

“Are you okay with some pain?” Matt asks Shiro. “Not anything excruciating, just… some.”

 

Shiro knocks twice against the bed.

 

“And you’ll tell me if any of it is too much?” Matt asks. “Not with words, I know your hand signals. You’ll tell me.”

 

Double knock.

 

“Okay then,” Matt says. “Here we go. Get on up here,” and practically drags Shiro up by his hair, and Shiro barely has time to get his elbows underneath himself before Matt is pushing Shiro’s mouth down onto his cock. 

 

Matt doesn’t have the leverage to thrust up without his prosthetics, residual limbs too short to do that work, but he has plenty of leverage to shove down, both hands on Shiro’s head with one fisted painfully in his hair, and the pace he forces Shiro into is punishingly fast, no time for technique as much as just letting Matt do what he wants with him and trying not to choke. 

 

It’s all the energy that’s been winding tighter and tighter all night, suddenly exploding forth like one of Matt’s bombs, and Matt has Shiro for as long as he likes, he could do this to him for hours and it would be good, it would be right, but this isn’t going to be hours; it might not even be minutes. Matt’s barely touched either one of them all night, but he’s already more than halfway gone, the taste of his precome in Shiro’s mouth and his breaths loud and ragged above Shiro’s head.

 

“Okay?” Matt pants out, and Shiro quickly double knocks his yes. There’s nothing kind or caring about what Matt’s doing — he’s making no attempt to seem like he’s doing anything but using Shiro as a means to an end, with an edge of pointed cruelty that makes his shoves down harder than they need to be, his pace faster, his grip more vindictive than functional — but Shiro feels cared for nonetheless. Matt has him. Matt trusts Shiro with his body, with his desire, with his cruelty. This is what Matt has decided that he needs, and so this is what Shiro needs to do.

 

Shiro’s starting to feel a little woozy when Matt gasps in pain and shoves Shiro off, saying, “Wait, yellow, wait,” so Shiro moves back, breathing hard, and waits as Matt repositions himself, wincing at whatever had gotten pinched or rubbed wrong in his right leg.

 

“Alright. Come back,” Matt orders him after a moment, with a strangely unsure edge to his voice, and Shiro smiles and delivers himself back into Matt’s punishing grip.

 

To Shiro’s strange sense of time, it could be five minutes later or fifty when Matt starts pulling him down even harder. He doesn’t give Shiro any kind of warning before he comes, sudden and bitter and shouting, and Shiro barely manages to mostly swallow instead of choke. Matt pushes him off, and Shiro collapses onto the bed, heart racing and gasping for breath.

 

After a moment Matt reaches out. Shiro is starting to shake, but he’ll try to do whatever Matt wants of him, he’ll always try to be good for him — but Matt just gently brushes his sweaty hair back from his forehead.

 

“Thank you,” Matt says, softly, and as tired as Shiro is, he leans forward into Matt’s touch.

 

“Well, I think he’s done, and I certainly am, so some water is in order,” Allura says. “You too, Matt, sex is dehydrating.”

 

“Sure, that’d be great,” Matt says as she yawns and gets up, and then he hastily adds: “But from the case you brought.  _ Not _ from the sink.”

 

“Will do,” she says, padding over to his kitchen area. “He’s coming down now. Don’t let him get cold.”

 

Matt tries to throw a quilt over Shiro, but it only gets about halfway, and Matt mutters something and then says, “You’re going to have to help me here, sorry, can you wrap yourself up?” 

 

Shiro manages to pull the quilt mostly around himself before the shakes start in earnest, and then Allura is there, helping him sit upright enough to drink and then cleaning him up, murmuring gentle encouragement and praise, easing him to lay back down afterwards.

 

“Is this normal?” Matt asks, sounding alarmed.

 

“Yes, usually,” Allura says. “Sometimes he comes down harder.”

 

“Is there — what should I be doing?” Matt asks.

 

“Just be here with us, for now,” she says. “Touch is good. And you and I can talk, the sound is good too.”

 

Shiro drifts for a while, their voices somewhere far and faint behind him as his awareness of his body fades away and his mind goes wherever it goes when they do this, somewhere dark and quiet and still. Eventually, he starts coming back to himself, piece by piece, and at some point he realizes that Allura’s bundled him up in two of Matt’s quilts and wedged him between them, with his head on Matt’s lap and Allura pressed up protectively against his back, a chaste echo of their earlier positions.

 

“You need a bigger bed,” Allura is telling Matt when Shiro surfaces.

 

“You need a smaller boyfriend,” Matt shoots back.

 

“Partner,” Allura corrects him. “Well, technically consort, but I like ‘partner’ better. A partnership of equals. It’s a word doesn’t even exist in High Altean, but it should.”

 

“Why doesn’t it exist?” Matt asks. He’s started petting Shiro, running his long fingers through his hair, and Shiro leans into the feeling, his shakes slowly subsiding into something warmer and more content.

 

“Alteans were very… concerned with hierarchy,” Allura says slowly. “Among Altean nobility, marriage was sometimes a very loving relationship, but it was always a relationship where there was a high status spouse and others of descending status. The expectation was that you would either rule over your spouses or be ruled.”

 

“You do rule over him, though,” Matt points out, and Allura laughs.

 

“Only sometimes,” she says. “Only when he wants me to.”

 

“So you’re a rebel in more ways than just fighting the Galra,” Matt says.

 

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Allura says. “I’m a crown princess with only one spouse who I don’t even call my spouse, and I treat him as my social equal. More unforgivably, he’s not even Altean, and I have a child with him who I openly love and acknowledge. It would have been a terrible scandal, even in my father's time, and I’m not sure my father would have approved, considering his own very traditional marriage, although he did have quite the sense of humor.”

 

“Do you miss Altea?” Matt asks.

 

“As rotten as it was underneath the surface of things — Yes. Every day,” Allura says. “Do you miss Earth?”

 

“Not  _ every _ day,” Matt says. “For a while, not at all. I couldn’t. I didn’t even start thinking about it again until I came here.”

 

“Are you happy here, then?” Allura asks, then amends that to, “Do you like it here? It’s beautiful, but it also seems very… grey.”

 

“I don’t know,” Matt says. “You’d think I would by now, I’ve been here long enough, but I’m still not sure. I like it better than being a prisoner, or being a rebel. I guess I’m good at surviving wherever you put me, but I didn’t make a very good soldier, even for the right side.”

 

He’s quiet for a while, then adds, “I’m lonely here. The locals are friendly enough, but I don’t belong to this place, not really.”

 

“I would invite you to live on the Castle, but you said you were done being a soldier,” Allura says.

 

“And you need me here for Alric and the others,” Matt says.

 

“Yes,” Allura says. “That too.”

 

“It’s okay,” Matt says. “I get it. I’d do the same thing if I had a kid.”

 

“It’s not okay,” Allura says. “But it is what it is, for now. And I’m glad you understand.”

 

Shiro must move or make some sort of noise, because Matt looks down at him and then Allura shifts against Shiro’s back, probably trying to see for herself.

 

“Is he here?” she asks Matt, who nods. “Welcome back, darling.”

 

“How much of that did you hear?” Matt asks him.

 

“Enough,” Shiro says hoarsely. Matt frowns.

 

“I don’t know a lot about all this,” he says, waving a hand vaguely over Shiro and Allura both, “but I can guess that we probably shouldn’t be having a depressing conversation right over your head afterwards.”

 

“You’re both here,” Shiro mumbles. “And I can hear you. That’s most of it, for me. I follow that back.”

 

Matt still looks doubtful, but Allura presses even closer to Shiro’s back and tells him, her voice warm as the quilts wrapped around him, “You did magnificently, my love.”

 

“Yeah,” Matt tells him. “You really did.”

 

“You can keep touching me,” Shiro says hopefully, “that’s nice, too,” and Matt laughs and resumes his petting, and Shiro settles back down into the feeling, caught between these two people who’ve trusted him with so much, who had so much faith that he would be good for them, that he would be good  _ to _ them, and he could be, and he was, and they’re happy with him for it, and eventually he drifts down into a doze and then into true sleep, still held fast between them.  
  


*

 

Shiro wakes up sometime in the middle of the night. At first he can’t figure out what woke him — he slept dreamlessly, no loud noises startled his body into heart-pounding awareness, he’s in no pain other than a few pleasant aches — but gradually he becomes aware of new sounds next to him, the soft sounds of two people kissing and a slicker, wetter sound, and in the dim light of the lamp Matt left on for him, he sees that Allura has turned away from him so that she can make out with Matt, lazy and directionless the way Shiro now knows that they both like.

 

They look good together, easy and sure, with Allura biting a bruise onto Matt’s throat and his hand between her legs; he gasps, then whispers something to her, and she goes back to kissing him, smiling against each other’s mouths as they roll even further away from Shiro. Allura’s practically on top of Matt, but he just pulls her down closer to let her grind down on his thigh — and Shiro feels cold all over now, despite the quilts tucked snugly around him, but he shoves that feeling away, locks it down in the iron box where he keeps all his discomforts, because he needs to be good for them, and if that means being left behind, he’ll do it. 

 

It’s alright, he tells himself as he tries to curl away from them, give them as much space as possible. They don’t want him, and it’s alright, he wouldn’t want himself either, he understands. He doesn’t know why he ever thought that he could deserve them, and maybe he should just leave, walk out into the cold and the dark like Matt had warned him not to, because Shiro doesn’t care what happens to him if it means they’ll be happy, if it means they’ll be safe, he doesn’t  _ care _ —

 

But Matt must figure out the rough shape of what Shiro’s trying to do, because Shiro hears the kissing stop and Matt’s voice saying, “Wait, hold on, did he wake up?”

 

“Did he?” Allura asks, and then she’s whispering, “Shiro, darling, are you awake?”

 

He nods miserably, back still turned to her, and she asks, louder now, “Are you alright?”

 

He has to answer that honestly, because that’s what she wants, but he can’t answer that honestly, because that’s apparently what she needs, so he just waffles wretchedly and finally says, “You two should keep — It’s fine, I don’t need —” and Allura sighs.

 

“I hoped this wouldn’t happen, but I thought it might,” she says. “Shiro, come on, turn around, please.”

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers as he turns to face her, because he has to do what she wants but he knows he’s doing it badly, he knows he’s being bad but he can’t seem to stop himself, he never can, he should just —

 

“Shiro, don’t even think of doing something awful to yourself because of this,” she says firmly. “You can’t help how you’re feeling right now, you can’t control that, and I’m not unhappy with you. Neither is Matt,” although Shiro can see that she reaches behind her and pokes Matt at that, hard.

 

“I’m not unhappy with you,” Matt says hurriedly, “I’m really not.”

 

Allura reaches out and strokes Shiro’s face, her swordstaff calluses rough against his skin. “Was there something that brought this on?”

 

(“What’s happening?” Matt hisses to her as Shiro tries to find the words to explain the feeling that dragged him out of sleep.

 

“I told you he comes down harder sometimes,” Allura whispers back. “This is that.”)

 

“You two were — I didn’t mean to interrupt, I’m  _ sorry _ , I’ll leave you alone,” Shiro says.

 

“Oh,” Allura says, with an air of dawning realization. “I’m so sorry, darling, I should have realized. We let you be because you were sleeping, and we didn’t want to wake you up after you’d tired yourself out so much for us. That’s all. We didn’t mean to make you feel unwelcome here, or unwanted.”

 

“Is that what — you’re not unwanted at all,” Matt says, pushing himself up so he can peer over Allura at Shiro. “Of course we want you, that’s why we’re here with you. You…” Matt pauses, looking as though he’s trying to remember something. “You were good for us. We were trying to be good for you.”

 

“Alright, come here,” Allura says, opening her arms, and Shiro goes, even though he thinks he shouldn’t, because she told him to, and tucks himself against her side, head resting heavily on her collarbone. He thinks she might have shifted herself a little bigger to hold him better, but he can’t be sure. “There, see? Not unwanted at all. Very wanted.”

 

“Allura, would you mind if I —” Matt asks, gesturing down to her other side, and she nods, so he presses up against her, reaching across her ribcage to grasp Shiro gently by the arm, his hand warm and sure through the cold that’s slowly leaching out of Shiro, drop by drop, bled off by Allura’s words and her body beneath him. 

 

“Very wanted,” Matt echoes, and like this, even without his glasses Shiro’s within his field of vision, so when Matt looks at him across Allura, Shiro knows that Matt actually sees him. “Wanted so fucking much.”

 

“I wasn’t trying to make you stop,” Shiro tells them. “I don’t want you to stop because of me. If you want to — I don’t want that.”

 

“Well, I’d be amenable to picking back up,” Allura says after a moment. “You’re quite a good kisser, Matt.”

 

“I dunno, that kind of killed the mood,” Matt says, and Allura shoots him a look as Shiro tenses up again.

 

“I’m sure we can find it again,” she says. “And if we can’t — Shiro, that’s not your fault either.”

 

Matt squints at him. “And you’re not doing your self-sacrificing schtick.”

 

“I’m not,” Shiro says, softly.

 

“If it won’t make you feel shitty this time… then sure,” Matt tells Allura. “You’re pretty good at this yourself,” and then they’re back at it, with the same ease as before, although Matt keeps shooting Shiro little glances out of the corner of his eye — but Shiro wasn’t lying. He hasn’t lied once to them tonight.

 

He’s slowly feeling better now, with their words holding him back from the tempting darkness outside Matt’s door, so grateful to be here with them as they laugh and touch and whisper things to each other that Shiro can’t hear. Maybe it should make him jealous, or angry, that even just in one night Matt and Allura are building something between them that isn’t dependent on Shiro bridging that gap — but ‘should’ isn’t welcome here, in this place they make together. It took Shiro so long to learn that, him and Allura both — so unsure when he started, but he thought that Allura knew that down to her bones, and then one day she was the one to come down hard, the one to break, and Shiro realized how much she had to learn, too, how much of herself she asks him to keep safe every time they do this, every day of the life they’ve chosen to spend with each other. They’re still learning, but they’re learning together; and Matt can learn with them too.

 

And maybe Matt does, in some small way, because after a while he relaxes, pouring into Allura the same focus that Shiro’s seen him turn towards his machines. Eventually she brings him off with her hand, and then he slides himself down the bed to work her with his mouth, her thighs trembling around him as she breathes moans and directions both — 

 

— And throughout it all Shiro stays where he is, pressed up against Allura, the cold slowly being replaced by a sense of grace so bright and hot he can barely stand it, but he does. Shiro can stand it for them, because they told him that they want him and they want him to believe it, and that’s what they need him to do, so he’s trying to do it, because that will make them happy, for him to do what they want, so for once he lets himself stand proud in the light, and it doesn’t burn. It doesn’t hurt him at all.

 

*  
  


Shiro wakes up earlier the next morning than he’d like to, his internal clock still unfailingly wound to the Garrison schedule no matter how many years have passed since he even set foot on the planet it was supposed to be protecting. Matt must have woken up even earlier than he did, or not even slept at all, because when Shiro sits up to check, his side of the bed is empty, and he’s not in the cottage that Shiro can see or hear. 

 

Allura is still asleep, face mashed into the pillow. Given her druthers, she’d stay up until dawn and sleep until the afternoon, which Shiro really hopes she didn’t do last night, because they probably have to leave here before noon and a tired Allura is a bad-tempered Allura. She’s also managed to kick off all the blankets despite the faint chill inside Matt’s cottage. Shiro pulls them back over her, even though he knows she’ll just kick them off again, and puts on his clothes to go find Matt.

 

Matt’s not anywhere in the cottage, but his coat is missing from its peg, and when Shiro steps outside into the cold morning air, he hears the faint sounds of work and occasional swearing, and he rounds the corner of the cottage to check. 

 

Shiro hadn’t noticed them yesterday, too preoccupied with Allura’s plans and his own quiet worry, but there’s a whole wall of planters set against the side of Matt’s cottage now, vividly green and yellow and red and purple against the grey stone and the grey landscape behind it, and amongst it all is Matt, digging around in the plants and muttering to himself. The morning fog is still curling thick around them, like the ghosts of this land rose up to walk again in the night, but the sun is starting to rise above the mountains, and in its light Matt looks… 

 

The feeling strikes Shiro like a hammer to the chest, although he doesn’t dare name it, because it’s something that none of them can afford right now, even in the privacy of his own head, and he has to stop for a moment to breathe through it, let it roar through him. He breathes, and then he steps forward, making his footfalls as loud as he can against the earth so as to not startle Matt.

 

“I didn’t know you were a gardener,” Shiro says, and Matt looks up, his glasses slightly askew.

 

“I’m not,” he says, absently adjusting them with a soil-stained hand. “But after you left last time, I started thinking. I’m not going to do the goat thing, but — well, fresh vegetables are good for kids, right? And it’d give them something to do.”

 

“Xio doesn’t really do gardening,” Shiro warns him, although that’s a dramatic understatement, given her reaction the time Lance had tried to shove her off as free labor for Pidge and Hunk’s hydroponics. “And Maze definitely doesn’t do manual labor.”

 

“Maybe it’ll just be for me, then,” Matt says. “I can reach all these beds easy, I don’t need anyone to help me.”

 

“Or maybe Alric could help when he’s older,” Shiro says. “Maybe he’ll be a gardener. Allura likes gardening.”

 

“Is she any good?” Matt asks. “I could use some advice, I don’t really know what I’m doing —”

 

“Hell no,” Shiro says. “She’s terrible. Worse than her cooking. Kills everything, even the plants we pick up on desert planets. But she keeps trying, and Hunk keeps enabling her with cuttings.”

 

“Well, from my experience so far I’d say persistence is half the battle,” Matt says. “And the other half is soil pH and bugs and maybe building a fence so those fucking goats stop eating my greens.”

 

“I could help with that,” Shiro offers, and Matt gives him a look so knowing that it almost makes Shiro turn away in shame.

 

“It’d take more than an afternoon to build something sturdy enough,” Matt says. “So no thanks. I’ll see if I can get some local labor, I’m sure they have something broken that I could fix.”

 

“You really hate those goats,” Shiro observes.

 

“They’re my nemeses,” Matt says. “I can’t afford the meat and I’m allergic to the dairy, so they don’t do anything for me but eat my laundry and now my vegetables. But the worst they can do is bite me, so I guess they’re pretty good nemeses to have.”

 

“Then at least keep me updated on your goat war,” Shiro tells him. “It sounds much more entertaining than mine,” but Matt turns away, back to his garden.

 

“You both keep acting like you’re going to come back,” Matt says, more to the greens than Shiro’s face. “I don’t get it. I can be your secret or I can be your… something else, but I can’t be both.”

 

“I wish you could be,” Shiro says honestly. “I hope you can be, eventually.”

 

“I really hate this,” Matt confesses. “I don’t want to do this at all.”

 

“If you’re really not okay to be our backup plan, we can think of something else,” Shiro starts, but Matt waves him off.

 

“I’m okay being your backup plan,” Matt says. “It wasn’t anything I planned for or wanted, but when I think about kids here, it’s not that bad. They sound like a handful, even if you keep trying to convince me that they’re easy, but if I do end up with them I think I’ll be okay. It’s everything else about this that I hate.”

 

“If it’s any consolation, I hate it too,” Shiro tells him. “It’s necessary. But I hate it.”

 

“What even  _ are _ we, Shiro?” Matt asks. “Strangers? Friends? Lovers? A good fuck? Two really messed-up people who can’t stop hurting each other?”

 

“I have no idea,” Shiro admits. “But I hope we get the chance to find out.”

 

“I had a life here,” Matt says, unhappily. “Sort of. It sucked, and I was mostly just passing time until I died, but it was mine. And then you came barging in.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. “I didn’t know you felt like that; if I had, we wouldn’t have —”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” Matt interrupts. “Other than finding Pidge again — these visits? Best thing I’ve had in years. First time I’ve actually felt alive since I came here.”

 

“Why did you come here?” Shiro asks. “It’s kind of a… random place to end up.”

 

“I picked the farthest place from the war that I could find,” Matt says. “I thought being alone would bring me peace. But it’s mostly just made me alone.”

 

“I thought you wanted me to leave you alone,” Shiro says. “But if you didn’t — I’m sorry I didn’t come before this. I should have.”

 

Matt shrugs. “I thought I wanted you to leave me alone, too,” he says. “Guess I was wrong.”

 

“Do you do hugs?” Shiro asks him, and Matt looks at him askance. 

 

“That’s not something most people would ask,” Matt says. “Most people would just do.”

 

“I try not to be most people anymore,” Shiro says. “And I live with people who don’t like hugs, or only like them in certain ways or from certain people, and someone who flat-out can’t do them without it triggering her really, really badly. You’re right, we keep hurting each other, but I don’t want to if I don’t have to.”

 

“I do hugs,” Matt says after a moment. “But you’re too tall to do it without looming over me. I can’t do that. Sorry. It freaks me out.”

 

“If I don’t have to apologize for my triggers, neither do you,” Shiro reminds him.

 

“Yeah, but it’s different when it’s a person you like,” Matt says. “When it’s a person you want to be with. Around,” he quickly corrects, but Shiro hears the truth there anyway. “It’d be different if it was a certain kind of stranger, or hey, how about the people who actually fucking hurt us so badly? But it’s you.”

 

“Well, there’s a bench,” Shiro says. “I could sit, and you could do the looming. If you want to.”

 

“You know, I think I really do,” Matt tells him, voice wobbling, so Shiro sits, and then Matt is there, and he clings onto Shiro, like a lighthouse glimpsed through a storm, like he’s actually safe under Shiro’s hands, and Shiro clings back even tighter as Matt gradually starts to hitch and shake and eventually sob silently in his arms, scarred and hurting and so terribly, gloriously alive.

 

Shiro’s not sure how long they stay in each others’ hold. Long enough for the sun to burn off the fog, banish the ghosts back to wherever they came from. Eventually Matt sniffles and pulls back — “Sorry, my lower back is screwed up,” he explains, “I need to not bend over for a while” — and Shiro lets him go, sitting back against the cold stone of the cottage wall and closing his eyes for a moment, trying to put all the pieces of him that’d shaken loose back into their lockbox. Matt lets him, quietly moving back to his garden to do something with what sounds like shears, and when Shiro opens his eyes again Matt just looks at him and says, “Breakfast?”

 

“That sounds great,” Shiro tells him, and they walk back around together.

 

Allura is still asleep, so Shiro wakes her up as gently as he can while Matt putters around the kitchen area. As he had feared, she’s bleary-eyed and grumpy — “Were you two up the entire night?” Shiro asks Matt despairingly; “Not the  _ entire _ night,” Matt says — but she manages to put most of her clothes on the right limbs, although she does try to put her dress on inside-out before Shiro corrects her, and four cups of the foul-smelling tea later, she’s more or less awake and using full sentences.

 

“Are you alright, darling?” she asks Shiro after Matt excuses himself to the bathroom.

 

“What, last night or in general?” Shiro asks wryly.

 

“Both, I suppose,” Allura says, “although I did mean after last night.”

 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Shiro says. “No drop after I fell asleep the second time.”

 

“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling well,” Allura says. “And you and Matt seem a bit less… tense with each other.”

 

“Last night was great,” Shiro says. “Really great. And we talked this morning while you were still sleeping. That helped. It’s all still a mess, but that helped.”

 

“Too much of a mess?” Allura asks. “Do we need to figure out another backup plan?”

 

“No, he said he would do it if it came to that,” Shiro says. “It’s everything else that’s a mess. I don’t regret doing what we did, but a wiser man may not have done it, because now everyone’s miserable that we have to leave. He’s miserable. I’m miserable.”

 

“As am I,” Allura says. “This whole situation is miserable. All I can say is that it won’t be forever. We’ll turn things back in our favor, and then we’ll all have more options to choose from.”

 

“You can’t promise that,” Shiro gently points out. “I know you want to, but you can’t.”

 

“I can promise that we’ll try,” Allura says stubbornly. “Lotor may think he’s invincible, but so did his father, and we toppled him in a decade. We’re already done the impossible once. We can do it again.”

 

“What impossible thing are you going to do?” Matt asks, rejoining them.

 

“Topple Lotor’s army and bring you back his head,” Allura says cheerfully, and Shiro sighs.

 

“Well, that’s… quite a present,” Matt says finally. “Maybe I could have it stuffed.” 

 

Allura beams.

 

“Oh, and I do want some of your tea!” she adds. “I’ll compensate you at the local rate, of course.”

 

“I was really hoping she was going to forget that,” Shiro mutters to Matt, who smirks.

 

“How much do you want?” Matt asks her. “I just stocked up recently, it grows wild so it’s pretty cheap, and I have a  _ lot _ .”

 

“Shiro, how much extra space do we have in the cruiser?” Allura asks.

 

“None,” Shiro says firmly. “Absolutely none. Not even enough for a teaspoon.”

 

“Does it come in bricks or in bundles?” Allura asks Matt. “And how many do you have?”

 

“You know, I’m no stranger to sadism, but I’ve never met anyone who expressed it through tea,” Shiro tells him.

 

“Well, first time for everything,” Matt says serenely. “And you live with Pidge, so be prepared for this stuff to make its way into some unexpected places. The more you complain, the worse it’ll be.”

 

“I don’t suppose I can safeword out of this one,” Shiro says, and in response Matt flicks a bit of toast at him, grinning.

 

“Afraid not, darling,” Allura says, patting Shiro’s hand. “Not everything in life is bed games, and my choice in beverages certainly isn’t.”

 

After breakfast and dishes, finished quickly between all three of them, Allura and Matt manage to wedge far too many bundles of the tea into the cruiser. In Shiro’s opinion, just one would be far too many, but he loves this woman and he’s willingly interwoven his life with hers, so he resigns himself to the foul burning-bog smell, Keith’s inevitable complaining, Xio’s inevitable louder complaining, and the equally inevitable tea-based prank war that’s to come between Lance and Pidge that Shiro will probably fall victim to, because neither of them are very discriminate when they really get into it.

 

“I hope you know what you’ve done,” Shiro tells Matt as he loads Shiro up with yet another reeking armful to carry down the hill.

 

“What, be nice to Allura?” Matt asks innocently.

 

Shiro shakes his head. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. Just Allura was bad enough, and now I have two of you to mess with me.”

 

“I hope so,” Matt says, and squeezes Shiro’s hand for a moment before he shoves another bundle at him.

 

Even with the extra cargo, he and Allura are packed up far too soon, any sign of their presence here neatly stowed away and the sun too high in the sky to pretend that they can stay here any longer, no matter how badly Shiro wishes they could. Matt walks them down to their cruiser, although he doesn’t say much, just warnings here and there about this root twisting across the path, that sharp stone.

 

It’s turned into a rare clear day, the fog burned off completely, and the goat field is unpleasantly damp but alive with insects and small rustling things as they crunch their way through it. After their last visit, Allura had told him how much she loved the land here, the unapologetic wildness of the wind and the jagged peaks rising above them, but there’s still nothing about this grey moon that Shiro likes or wants for himself except the man who lives here though he doesn’t want to, held fast to this lonely place by his promise to them. 

 

Shiro’s so tired of hurting Matt, but he’s a father now, and there’s a ruthlessness to that love that comes before all else. He and Allura brought Alric into this world, and they have such dreams about the world that they’re going to make for him — but for all their principles, they’ll kill those dreams if their deaths will keep him alive, and they will hurt anyone they need to, even their friends. This is the choice Shiro will make every time, and Matt understands that, maybe more than most. He and Shiro both know what terrible things people will do to others to protect the ones they love, and what terrible things people will do to themselves for the same reason.

 

“I guess this is goodbye, then,” Matt says awkwardly when they reach the cruiser.

 

“Yes,” Allura says. “For now.”

 

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to go stargazing,” Matt tells her.

 

“Next time,” Allura says. “Brush up on your star stories.”

 

“This isn’t the last time you’ll see us,” Shiro adds. “We’ll be back.”

 

“Not too often,” Matt says. “The Galra spy networks in this system aren’t that good — I guess Lotor doesn’t care much about tubers — but they’re there. If I’m still your contingency plan, you can’t visit me much. Pidge should probably cut back on their visits too.”

 

“It won’t be forever,” Allura says firmly. 

 

“That’s kind of the whole point though, isn’t it?” Matt asks. “If it is forever. If you don’t win.”

 

“How’s this, then: as long as we’re alive, we’ll be back,” Allura says. “We’ll come back for you.”

 

“That’s a little pointed, don’t you think?” Matt says after a moment, sounding suspiciously choked up.

 

“Maybe, but it’s true. I don’t make promises lightly,” Allura says. “And what promises I do make, I keep.”

 

“Me too,” Shiro chimes in, and maybe it’s more than a decade too late, but — “I’m promising too.”

 

“It won’t be forever,” Allura says again. “We’re going to end this.”

 

“You’d better,” Matt says. “Now that I’m counting on you for that stuffed head and all.”

 

“We’ll try,” Shiro says. “I think… I think we can do it. But it might not happen soon.”

 

“I’m patient. I’ve had a lot of practice waiting,” Matt says. “I can wait a while longer. I want to.”

 

Allura moves carefully towards Matt, telegraphing her actions, and kisses him on the cheek. They clasp hands for a moment, smiling at each other, and Shiro wonders what it was that they talked about while he was asleep. Then she moves aside, and he and Matt stare at each other awkwardly from about four feet away.

 

“I don’t want to loom,” Shiro explains, and Matt says, “Yeah, don’t do that,” and fidgets a bit.

 

Allura sighs a very put-upon sigh. “Shiro, my love, there is a gangplank with steps, and it won’t fall off if you sit down on them.”

 

“Oh,” Shiro says, feeling stupid indeed, and Matt laughs a bit and says, “What would he even do without you,” but then Shiro’s sat down and Matt’s in front of him, and the kiss that starts out desperate eventually gentles into something softer until they’re just… being together, for this one moment away from the world — and it’s Matt who pulls away first, because it’s always Matt who pulls away first, and says, “You should go now. You have things to do. Tell Pidge I said hi.”

 

“I will,” Shiro says softly.

 

“This cruiser has a fair blowback, you should probably go about three lengths away to avoid getting hit by the air blast,” Allura tells Matt, who nods and abruptly turns and walks away, crunching and creaking his way through the tall grass back to the hill he calls home.

 

“You know, I thought the head thing was overkill, but I’m getting really into that idea right now,” Shiro tells her as he watches Matt leave.

 

“We can use it for a ball in that game that Lance is always talking about,” Allura says. “That feels like an appropriate level of respect for that creature.”

 

“Football?” Shiro asks, and she nods as she eases around him to ascend the gangplank. He takes a moment to compose himself before he follows her to find that she’s already in the pilot’s seat, starting the safety check.

 

“Are you flying us home?” he asks.

 

“You looked like you could use some time to rest,” Allura says. “And I’d prefer to not crash into the asteroid belt because you weren’t paying attention.”

 

“Probably wise. But let me know if you get too sleepy, I’ll rally,” Shiro says, buckling himself into the copilot seat. “What did you two talk about last night after I fell asleep? Either time. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I’m just curious.”

 

“A lot of things,” Allura says, wistfully. “I can’t have a lot of true friends, not as someone in my position, but I think he could be one, if we had the chance. Other than being strange about you and I at the beginning, he really doesn’t care about my titles.”

 

“I don’t think he cares about anyone’s titles,” Shiro says. “He’s got some authority issues.”

 

“Oh, I noticed,” Allura says dryly. “But don’t we all.”

 

“I’m certainly not complaining,” Shiro says, trying to peer out the windshield at Matt’s hill. “Is he out there?”

 

“No, I don’t think so,” Allura says after a moment’s examination. “He’s either on the other side of the hill or in the house.”

 

“That’s not a house, that’s barely a cottage,” Shiro mutters.

 

“I understand why he might not want to watch us leave again,” Allura says. “If you’re the one to walk away, you feel as though you have some choice in the matter.”

 

“He does have a choice,” Shiro says, as much to himself as to her.

 

“We all do,” Allura agrees. “And we’ve all made them.”

 

“And now we get to live with them,” Shiro says.

 

“Well, we’re all still alive to do so,” Allura says as she starts the cruiser’s engines. “And as Matt said, that’s a pretty good start.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for sex (after extensive negotiation, between three enthusiastically consenting characters) that includes objectification, light pain play, and different flavors of power play. Additional warnings for subdrop, (good) disassociation, hints at suicidal ideation, and brief references to past ableist attitudes towards / fetishization of a disabled character.


	5. Epilogue: Twenty-Seventh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue, with bonus Xio cameo. Content warnings in end notes.

The season that passes for summer in these mountains has finally limped its way around to this side of the moon, bringing longer days and snowmelt streaming down from the peaks, but the earth is still cool under Shiro’s hands as he digs around the last beanstalk in this row, awkwardly wiggling it free as it stubbornly clings to its home in the soil. Matt feeds his garden with eggshells, with wood ash, with the needles he gathers from the trees that grow along the path to his home, attacking the problem of the acidic land he lives on with meticulous monitoring and a lot of muttering about compost, and Shiro’s skin is streaked nearly black by an entire morning of this delicate work, his fingers cramping with cold and his back aching from bending over.

 

He finally succeeds in cutting the plant free, wincing at the slicing sound of severed roots despite his attempt at gentleness, and carries it with cupped hands over to where Matt is carefully packing his garden into their travel boxes, trailing vines and teetering stems tied back with stick and string, roots wrapped into rough fabric balls. Shiro knows from every story that Matt’s told him this last year and a half that gardening is a ruthless calling, culling as many plants as he nurtures and transplanting certain insects to massacre others, once even staying up the whole night to shoot whatever burrowing creature kept gnawing through the screens around the lower planters, but to Shiro’s eye, Matt handles his plants with the same care that he turns to his machines and his growing pile of notebooks and Shiro, steady and sure.

 

“Last one,” Shiro says, handing him the beanstalk, and Matt wraps up the roots and places it in with its fellows, looping the long vine through the web of string holding back the others.

 

“Do you know if Xio’s finished loading up the cart?” Matt asks. “These boxes should go in last, and they’re not going to make it down the hill on the same trip.”

 

“Considering that we haven’t seen her whizzing down the hill with it, probably not,” Shiro says. “I can go check on her if you want,” but Matt just shrugs.

 

“I’m not in any rush,” Matt says. “I’ve got you for the whole day, and it’s not that long of a trip, even with all the jumps. Plus, we started at the asscrack of dawn. Curse you and your ridiculous military schedule.”

 

“I think you mean ‘curse my work ethic’,” Shiro says.

 

“No, a work ethic is getting up _after_ the sun rises and staying up half the night, like a normal human,” Matt says. “Getting up when it’s still dark outside is just masochism. And I don’t even get to enjoy it this time, because you show up at my door and wake me up, too.”

 

“You said you wanted to get an early start,” Shiro reminds him.

 

“A horrible mistake,” Matt says. He sets one travel pot off to the side, green tendrils spilling out of the top with tiny blue buds nestled in the curling leaves, a few of them beginning to bloom, and explains: “This one is for Allura, so it gets packed separately.”

 

“You know she’s going to kill it within a week,” Shiro informs him.

 

“Then I’ll give her another one the next time she visits,” Matt says, unconcerned. “And she can kill that one too. Or she could actually read the directions that I send with them.”

 

“She says there’s always things that come up that the directions don’t cover,” Shiro says. “Last time it was some kind of purple fungus.”

 

“Well, Quuduzh has a vidcom network and my new place is wired in, she can give me a call the next time she’s got a question about a mysterious fungus,” Matt says, and then grins. “Or whenever. It’s a top-notch network. Super high definition, great sound quality.”

 

“I’ll tell her not to take any calls from you in the common area,” Shiro says dryly. “She wanted me to tell you that she’s sorry she couldn’t come today, by the way. Something came up with the Shon Mir situation and they needed her to arbitrate. Again.”

 

“It’s okay,” Matt says. “I kind of expected that one of you would have to bail.”

 

“Sorry,” Shiro says quietly, but Matt waves him off.

 

“Politics,” Matt says. “I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with any of it anymore.”

 

“Believe me, some days I wish I didn’t have to either,” Shiro says, as Xio rounds the corner of the house, carrying something brown and pointy-looking.

 

“Hey, Xio, is the cart loaded up?” Matt asks.

 

“Mostly,” she says, vaguely.

 

“What happened to your boots?” Shiro asks, alarmed.

 

“My hands were too cold to feel textures. The grass looked interesting,” Xio explains.

 

“There’s a ton of sharp rocks everywhere, it’s not really safe for bare feet,” Matt says.

 

“Galra can’t get tetanus,” she informs him.

 

“You’re only part Galra, and even full Galra aren’t immune to slicing their foot open on a rock,” Shiro says despairingly. “Please put your shoes back on.”

 

“Yeah, maybe. I want this, can I keep this?” Xio asks Matt, presenting him with what looks like a piece of rust-eaten metal from Matt’s scrap box. “It wasn’t in your go pile and Maze is in a Sculpture Phase.”

 

“Sure,” Matt says. “If it came from the box under the bench, take anything you want out of there. Just be careful, a lot of the stuff has sharp edges.”

 

“Sweet,” she says, and scampers off, completely ignoring Shiro yelling after her, “Shoes!”

 

Matt snorts. “Remember the time you tried to tell me that she would be easy?”

 

“I never said _easy_ ,” Shiro protests.

 

“Heavily implied,” Matt retorts. “Extremely implied. You rotten liar.”

 

“Maybe a little bit,” Shiro admits. “But for a good reason.”

 

“Yeah, I know,” Matt says. “I'm not mad, not really. And she’s a lot, but I like her. I’m glad I finally get to meet her, and not in a contingency plan way.”

 

“Me too,” Shiro says.

 

They lapse into silence as they tote the travel boxes full of plants around to the front of the cottage and the waiting hover-cart. A few minutes later, Xio emerges from the cottage with what looks like Matt’s entire scrap box — although at least she has her boots back on — and Shiro takes a break from lifting things to lean up against one of the fence posts circling the cottage and watch her unsuccessfully try to cram it into the cart between a rolled-up quilt and a lumpy leather bag of tools. Matt fusses with his plants for a while longer, but eventually he joins Shiro, sighing and tipping his head up towards the same sunlight that glints off the handle of the blaster tucked beneath his coat.

 

“Are you okay?” Matt asks Shiro. “You seem kind of… subdued this morning. Bad night?”

 

“Honestly? I'm still disappointed that you're not coming to live on the Castle with us,” Shiro says. “But I get it, I’m not mad or anything. Just disappointed. I miss you.”

 

“I can't do the Castle right now,” Matt says, gently. “Maybe someday. Maybe never. I miss you guys too when you’re not around, so much, but living on an active warship...” He shudders. “No. And it’s not like you’re going to step away from your positions any time soon, so visits it is.”

 

“We’ll make them count,” Shiro says, and Matt snorts.

 

“Let’s not make them count too hard,” he says. “I’d rather not get kicked out of my new place because of noise complaints.”

 

“If you do ever change your mind about the Castle — you’re always welcome there,” Shiro tells him. “No matter what happens between the three of us. Standing invitation, no terms and conditions.”

 

“So I can bring my goat flock?” Matt asks.

 

“Maybe some conditions,” Shiro says.

 

“Just kidding,” Matt says. “I still don't have any goats. I'm so fucking sick of the goats. I never want to see another goat in my life.”

 

“I don't think that'll be a problem in Quuduzh,” Shiro says. “No goats on the whole planet. And even if there were, they barely have enough room in that city for all the people, much less roaming herds of livestock.”

 

He pauses, then quietly asks, “Are you sure you're going to be okay there? It's… loud. Not peaceful at all.”

 

“I'm not sure of anything,” Matt says, staring out into the mountains beyond his cottage; the distant field where they’d gone stargazing the last time they were all here, laying in the tall grass with the night-noises around their heads as Matt traced out the local star-stories for Allura and Shiro dozed off to the sound of his voice; the still that Allura kept secretly breaking pieces off of when she visited, only to find that Matt kept replacing them. “But I liked it when I visited, and whatever peace I'm looking for... I didn't find it here. Maybe loud will be good.”

 

He smiles. “And it's closer to the systems you usually operate out of, so you guys can slip away to visit more than once a month.”

 

“Every three weeks,” Shiro protests.

 

“I know,” Matt says, gently. “I count them too.”

 

Matt still can't reliably handle Shiro looming above him, whether for a kiss or a hug or a simple hand up after a fall — less of them now with Matt’s retrofitted prosthetics, but still more than Shiro would like — but he can hold hands, and so they do, Matt tangling his cold fingers with Shiro’s as they watch Xio forcibly shove the last few belongings Matt is bringing to his new home into the hover-cart, scrap box momentarily abandoned by the side.

 

“There's nothing breakable in there, is there?” Shiro asks, wincing after a particularly loud clang.

 

“Other than the plants and my notebooks, I don't have anything that I'd actually be upset losing,” Matt says. “And I got an advance, so I can afford to replace stuff if she smashes it. I'm going to have to get a lot of stuff anyways, the furniture’s too bulky and everything electrical has a different voltage, I'd fry it all in a week.”

 

Shiro knows better than to offer to help pay for any of it, so he just asks, “When are you starting the new job?”

 

“Three days from now,” Matt says. “I've going to be teaching five cryptography courses at three different levels and they're talking about having me double in astrophysics if I can handle the workload. I still have to buy a stove, but I don't need to worry about buying a bed, because I don't think I'm ever going to sleep.”

 

"Are you disappointed that it's not just astrophysics?" Shiro asks quietly.

 

"No," Matt says, then: "I don't know. Maybe I'm not ready to teach that to strangers. Not yet."

 

“So you're ready to teach cryptography?” Shiro asks, and Matt snorts.

 

“Fuck no,” he says. “It's gonna be a shitshow. But I think I'm going to enjoy it.” His mouth quirks in a smile. "At least, I think I'll enjoy it more than I enjoyed here."

 

Matt’s quiet for a moment, then adds, “I know Allura pulled some strings to get me this job, and I suspect you did too, because the starting pay for a visiting professor is surprisingly nice, so… thanks. Normally I'd tell you to take a hike, but I really want this, and I know you two aren't going to yank it out from under me if you get mad at me. And Allura already yelled at me about the downfalls of pride.”

 

“You've done so much for us, impressing the value of a talented cryptographer-slash-astrophysicist upon a few university bureaucrats is nothing,” Shiro says.

 

“It's not about debt. I'm not keeping a list of who owes who what,” Matt tells him. “Not anymore.”

 

“I'm not either,” Shiro says. Matt gives him a look, and Shiro amends it to: “I'm trying really hard not to.”

 

“Well, trying is better than not at all,” Matt says. “I can work with trying.”

 

“Do you have any plans for this place?” Shiro asks him. “It seems like a shame to let it all rot again.”

 

“I was planning on letting the locals figure out what to do with it,” Matt says. “Unless you know anyone who needs a really quiet, isolated, goat-infested place to stay?”

 

“I’ll ask Allura,” Shiro says. “I’m sure there’s someone.”

 

“There usually is,” Matt says. “Maybe we should keep it as a bolthole, just in case. You really think that Lotor’s on the run this time? You thought that before, and look how that turned out.”

 

“Last time we were stupid,” Shiro says. “But we’ve been more careful, invested more in our intelligence networks, and Mnenmus was enough to scare everyone into actually paying for their damn defenses. The war’s not over, not by a long shot, but all our sources say that he’s actually running, not just feinting. We wouldn’t have given you the clear if we thought it wasn’t safe to do so.”

 

“If something happens to you guys, you can still get Coran to send the kids to me,” Matt says quietly. “It wouldn’t be as safe as being here, but I know how to disappear into a city if I have to. I’ve done it before. I could figure something out.”

 

“You’re still on our list,” Shiro assures him, and Matt smiles, squeezes his hand a bit tighter.

 

“Good,” Matt says. “Don’t take me off of it. Even if you do still think I deserve better.”

 

“You do deserve better,” Shiro says.

 

“I don’t care,” Matt says. “This is what I want.”

 

“Are you ready?” Xio demands, having finally managed to wedge all of Matt’s go pile into the cart, the scrap box balanced precariously on top.

 

“Yeah,” Matt says. “I’m ready. Let’s get this cart load down and unloaded so we can come back for the plants and leave before it gets too late.”

 

“I thought you weren’t in a rush,” Shiro says as Xio takes off running, pushing the cart in front of her, and he and Matt start to pick their way more slowly down the path.

 

“I changed my mind,” Matt says. “I’ve already said my goodbyes to the four people who actually talked to me, I don’t need to be here any longer, and I want to capitalize on having help from a hyperactive fifteen-year-old as long as I can. My new place is up three flights of stairs.”

 

“Well, like you said, you have us for the whole day,” Shiro says. “But we’re not going to be able to stay the night. I wish I could, though. I like waking up next to you.”

 

“Okay, you have to know what you sound like when you say things like that, right?” Matt demands.

 

“Maybe,” Shiro says, cheerfully. “Still not lying.”

 

“Heart-eyes motherfucker,” Matt mutters, but he’s smiling too.

 

“You know, I’m pretty sure Allura and I have a free night next week,” Shiro says. “Although if anyone asks, we’re in closed-door meetings with Pidge about highest-level clearance intelligence reports.”

 

“And what am I supposed to do with this top-secret information?” Matt asks.

 

“Well, you could invite us over for dinner,” Shiro suggests, and Matt laughs.

 

“I guess I’d better hurry up and buy that bed after all,” he says.

 

“Then it’s a date,” Shiro says. “I promise. Allura can figure out a way to politely tell the Shon Mir delegation to fuck off if they try to extend their stay again.”

 

“Careful with those promises of yours, I’ll actually hold you to them,” Matt teases.

 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Shiro says, and they step together off the path into the sawgrass goat field, sharp-edged and treacherous and a home to so many things nonetheless, with the mist still grabbing at their boots, and the sky so bright above them.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for brief reference to alcohol abuse. The title of this fic comes from the concept album by Jordan Reyne, which is totally unrelated to the events of this fic but is great music in its own right, and apparently a novel, which I haven't read and so can't comment on.
> 
> I began writing this story before the stills of the new season trailer dropped and we got to see that a) Matt's alive! b) Matt's kicking ass in an awesome outfit, c) Matt's reunited with Shiro, and d) Matt is presumably not a double amputee (yet). The Matt in this story is inspired by yaboyjeiji's wonderful art [here](http://yaboykeiji.tumblr.com/post/157220701184/give-us-rebel-leader-matt-holt-whos-been-through).
> 
> This isn't the last you'll see of this triad in the Alabanza 'verse. Thankfully, this is the last you'll see of the goats.


End file.
